On March 24, 1926, Jim Williams was convicted in Palatka for
stabbing his wife, Stella, to death when he found her in the company of another
man. Judge A.V. Long of the Putnam Circuit
Court sentenced him to die by electrocution.
Williams, then 25 years old, was a black man in the Jim Crow Era South
and, as such, his crime, trial and sentencing did not get much attention beyond
a one sentence blurb in the local newspapers.
In fact, some accounts did not even mention that it was his wife whom he
was convicted of killing, identifying the victim simply as “another negro.”
It had been only two years since Florida centralized all executions and set
the electric chair at Raiford as the method of death. During that two year period three men were
executed, two for murder and one for criminal assault. On May 1, 1926 Florida Governor John W.
Martin signed death warrants for Williams and three other convicted men. One man would be executed each week during
the month of May. Jim Williams’ appointment
with Florida’s
electric chair, known as Old Sparky, was scheduled for May 31.
The signing of the death warrants was prominently covered by
the press for two reasons. The first
reason was that one of the four men would be the first white man the state had
electrocuted. He was Harry Scrimm of Miami who was convicted of raping a four year old girl in Dade County. The other reason was that the four signings
set a record for the number of warrants signed at any one time by a Florida
Governor. As reported in The Tampa
Times, “The Governor, with a sweep of the
pen, is believed to have set a record for Florida executives for signing death
warrants. The signature was affixed
within three minutes or less. The
governor then turned in his seat and threw the pen out of an open window.”
Jim Williams was moved to a death cell at Raiford to await
his fate. As the date for Williams’
execution grew near, his attorneys requested the Governor to allow a stay so
that they could appeal his conviction to the Florida Supreme Court. The stay was granted and Williams was
transferred back to the Putnam County Jail to await the outcome of his appeal. His lawyers argued before the Supreme Court
that his conviction should be overturned because there were no witnesses to the
killing and there was no proof that Jim, if he did kill Stella, did so with
premeditation. The court rejected the
arguments and upheld the conviction. On
April 15, 1927 the Governor signed a new death warrant. The new execution date was set for the week
of May 9.
On the morning of May 11, 1927 Jim Williams was back in a
Raiford death cell, awaiting his sentence which was to be carried out later
that day. The tension was obviously having an effect on him. One report stated that he was acting in a
“demented manner”, refusing to eat anything except fragments of the mattress in
his cell. His attorneys were successful in obtaining a last minute writ of
habeas corpus from a judge in Gainesville
who ordered him to undergo a psychiatric examination.
This Article is Reprinted with Permission from the Book
Florida Felons: Stories from the History of Raiford Prison
The writ was served on Raiford Superintendent J.S. Blitch
who, after consulting with the Governor, halted the execution and sent Williams
to Gainesville. It did not take long for him to be adjudged
sane enough for execution and on May 20, 1927 Governor Martin signed a third
and final death warrant for Jim Williams.
The new execution date would be the week of May 30.
At 2:30 in the afternoon of June 1, 1927 Jim Williams was
removed from his cell and placed in the electric chair. He remained passive and silent as he was
secured by the chairs heavy leather straps.
His shoes were removed and an electrode was attached to his leg. A wet sponge was placed on his head to
conduct electricity. The sponge was held
in place by a metal helmet with wires attached to the prison generator.
Then Jim Williams and the one dozen witnesses in the room
waited in silence…and waited…and waited.
According to one newspaper account, “The
negro stared goggle-eyed past the witnesses, the liquid eyes of his race and
the nervous mumbling of his lips, which moved incessantly, possibly in prayer,
alone betraying his dread.”
Unknown to the condemned man and the witnesses, a heated
discussion was going on in the next room about who was required to pull the
switch that would end Jim Williams’ life.
The problem was the following language contained in the death warrant:
“You, the said
Superintendent of our State Prison, or some deputy to be designated by you, the
said sheriff of our said County of Putnam, unless you be prevented by sickness
or other disability, shall be present at such execution. Such execution shall be carried out by you
and such deputies, electricians and assistants as you may require to be present
to assist.”
While the warrant clearly required both the Prison
Superintendent and the Putnam County Sheriff to be present, it did not specify
which one was to actually carry out the execution. Adding to the confusion was the fact that
Putnam County Sheriff R.J. Hancock was not personally in attendance; in his
place he sent two deputy sheriffs. The
three men, Superintendent J.S. Blitch, and Putnam County Deputy Sheriffs W.I.
Minton and W.M. Cannon, were each unwilling to act as executioner. When the Governor was informed of the
stalemate he ordered Jim Williams returned to his cell until it could be sorted
out.
Finally, to the relief of the condemned and the disappointment
of the spectators, Superintendent Blitch entered the death chamber and
announced “Gentlemen, there will be no
execution today. The execution will be
held at 2:30 p.m. Friday.”
Before the new execution date arrived, Governor Martin
realized that more time would be needed to resolve the legal confusion he
created with the language of the warrant and granted Jim Williams a thirty-day
stay. He stated that the reprieve was
being given “at the request of a number
of citizens from Putnam
County.”
During that thirty-day stay period Florida Attorney General
Fred Davis, who also authored the bill establishing the use of the electric
chair, issued an opinion stating that the warden is the official
executioner. However, the publicity
about the bizarre circumstances made many believe that Jim Williams had suffered
enough. Reflecting that belief, an
editorial was published on June 20, 1927 in the Tallahassee Democrat that read
in part, “Was ever there such jesting
with life and death? Murderer or not,
the negro merits no such trifling. To
all intents and purposes he has died once.
There have been commutations based on less merit than one for this negro
on the ground that he has been subjected to cruel and unusual treatment.”
On August 15, 1927 Governor Martin announced that he would
recommend that Jim Williams’ death sentence be commuted to life in prison and
the change in sentence was approved by the State Board of Pardons on September
1. The next morning Williams was removed
from the death cell and returned to the general prison population.
Over the next several years Jim Williams was a model
prisoner, although his brush with death left him with emotional scars. After visiting Raiford, Attorney General
Davis said of him, “They can’t get him to
sit in a barber’s chair because it looks a bit like the electric chair. He steadfastly refuses to undergo any
tonsorial operations, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it would not take the
whole prison population to make him do it.”
Jim Williams remained in prison and eventually qualified for
work on a road crew. In March of 1934 he
was on the back of a convict truck when it came upon a white woman, Mrs. O.P.
Meadows in a field, screaming for help while being charged by a bull. Williams jumped off the truck, ran into the
field and beat back the bull, saving the woman’s life. Williams then returned to the truck and was
brought back to Raiford with little fanfare.
Williams’ act of bravery was rewarded that Christmas with a
conditional pardon, eight years after his conviction and seven years after he
was strapped into the electric chair.
Upon his release he became the only person who was ever that close to death
in Florida’s
electric chair to walk away a free man.
On December 23, 1934 Jim Williams walked out of the front
gate of Raiford Prison. He was never
heard from again.
This Article is Reprinted with Permission from the Book
Florida Felons: Stories from the History of Raiford Prison
