What Happens When Death Row Inmates Survive Execution?

On May 3rd, 1946, a convicted man named Willie Francis felt 2,000 volts of electric current surging through his body during his scheduled execution in an electric chair. Miraculously, he survived the ordeal, leaving witnesses and authorities in complete disbelief. This harrowing event serves as a chilling reminder of the fallibility of capital punishment throughout history.

There have been numerous documented cases of convicts who, against all odds, survived their own executions. These stories are not merely tales of luck but represent failures of equipment, human error, and sometimes circumstances that defy logical explanation. The aftermath for these individuals was often just as traumatic and complex as the failed attempts on their lives.

Kenneth Smith represents a modern example of a harrowing botched execution process. Court documents detail how he was kept strapped to a gurney for hours on November 17th, 2022, while medical personnel attempted to find a vein. Attorneys reported that he was repeatedly jabbed with needles in his arms and hands, turning the death chamber into a site of prolonged agony.

Smith had been a hired killer in the 1980s, contracted by a preacher named Charles Sennett Sr. to murder his wife, Elizabeth Sennett. The motive was purely financial, driven by the preacher’s massive debts and a desire to collect life insurance money. Smith and an accomplice, John Forest Parker, were hired for the job, but the botched plan led directly to their capture.

After spending 33 years on death row, the day of his execution arrived, only for the three-man team to fail repeatedly at establishing an IV line. Smith described the horrific experience, stating that they eventually instructed guards to flip the gurney backward. This left him in an inverted position, with his feet toward the ceiling, while his head bowed toward the ground.

In his own words, Smith recounted that their masks were covered in his blood as they finally stabbed his collarbone in a desperate attempt to insert a central line. After four hours of fruitless and painful efforts, the team returned him to his cell, following an initial court order to pause the process. His lawyers argued that the experience was deeply disturbing and traumatizing.

However, the saga for Smith was far from over, as the state of Alabama sought new ways to carry out his sentence. By August 2023, the state decided to utilize nitrogen hypoxia, a method that had never been tested before. Smith, having cheated death multiple times, faced a future where the state was determined to use this untested method to ensure his demise.

Ramel Broom experienced a similarly terrifying ordeal on September 15th, 2009, in the state of Ohio. Convicted of the abduction, rape, and murder of Trina Middleton, Broom was scheduled for execution by lethal injection. Born in Michigan in 1956, he had moved to Ohio as a child and eventually spiraled into a life of crime, leading to his eventual death sentence.

On the day of his scheduled execution, the process went horribly wrong. For two hours, the executioners struggled to locate an IV line, causing Broom excruciating pain through numerous, failed penetrations. The Ohio government eventually intervened, calling off the execution due to these technical failures, postponing it by a week.

That postponement turned into years as his legal team fought for appeals. During this time, Broom even authored a book detailing the psychological and physical trauma of that day. He remained on death row until he eventually passed away from COVID-19 complications on December 20th, 2020, never facing the lethal injection that the state had failed to administer years prior.

Hanging, a common form of capital punishment in earlier centuries, was frequently prone to failure. William Deuel’s case from 1740 England illustrates why this method eventually fell out of favor. Convicted as an accessory to a crime, Deuel was hanged at Tyburn alongside four others, and his body was left suspended for twenty minutes before being cut down for dissection.

The medical team at the anatomy theater was shocked to discover that Deuel had begun breathing slowly once his clothes were stripped away. As he regained consciousness and eventually spoke, the authorities were alerted, and he was returned to prison. It was later discovered that the pressure from the noose had caused delirium, rendering him unable to recall the execution.

Public sentiment shifted in his favor upon hearing of his survival, and he was eventually pardoned due to his mental state. His sentence was commuted to penal transportation, and he was exiled to North America. He lived out the remainder of his life in Boston, reportedly passing away around 1805, a man who had effectively returned from the dead.

John Lee is another man who famously defied the gallows in England. Convicted of murdering his employer, Emma Keys, in 1885, he maintained his innocence despite being sentenced to death by hanging. The prosecution’s case was largely circumstantial, relying on his presence in the house and past records, yet the court remained unmoved.

On the day of his execution, three separate attempts were made to hang him, and every single one failed. Each time he was positioned on the trapdoor, the mechanism refused to trigger, despite it functioning perfectly during testing. The embarrassment caused to the officials was immense, and the medical examiner eventually called for the proceedings to cease.

Following these failures, a judge commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. Over the years, further evidence emerged suggesting Lee was innocent, and he was eventually released in 1907. While accounts of his later life vary—some claim he died in a workhouse, others that he moved to the US—he remains etched in history as the man they could not hang.

Anne Green’s story from 1650 is perhaps one of the most remarkable instances of survival after a long-term suspension. A domestic servant in Oxfordshire, she was accused of infanticide after suffering a miscarriage, a claim she denied. Despite the circumstances, she was sentenced to be hanged at Oxford Castle.

She remained suspended for thirty minutes before being declared dead. Her body was then transferred to university physicians for dissection. However, twenty-four hours later, without food, water, or fresh air, one of the physicians noticed she still possessed a pulse. The discovery caused absolute shock, and they immediately moved to revive her with medicine.

After three days, she regained the ability to speak and move. Sir Thomas Reed, the official who oversaw her case, passed away, leaving no one to contest her reprieve. Despite local riots demanding her re-execution, she was allowed to live as a free person, eventually marrying and raising a family before passing away in 1659.

Willie Francis, whose story began this narrative, was a minor at the time of his 1946 execution in Louisiana. Accused of the murder of a local pharmacist, his trial was marred by a lack of defense and the use of coerced confessions. During the execution, the portable electric chair was improperly set up by an intoxicated guard, allowing him to survive the current.

The incident gained national attention, leading attorney Bertrand DeBlanc to take up his case. DeBlanc argued that executing him after the failed attempt constituted cruel and unusual punishment and highlighted evidence suggesting Francis had been framed. Despite these efforts, the Supreme Court rejected the appeals, and Francis was returned to the chair in 1947.

Before his second execution, his final words expressed a calm resignation. Reflecting on this case decades later, the idea of a person surviving thousands of volts of electricity remains an unsettling, rare, and deeply tragic testament to the fallibility and harshness of the justice system during that era.

Alan Eugene Miller’s experience in 2022 underscores the continued, modern-day failures in lethal injection procedures. Scheduled for execution in Alabama, he endured a two-hour ordeal as executioners repeatedly punctured his flesh in failed attempts to secure an IV line. Like others before him, he sat through the entire process, experiencing the physical trauma of multiple, deep needle penetrations.

The executioners ultimately stopped and evacuated the chamber, leaving Miller alive and bleeding. He was eventually returned to his cell, where he remained as his legal team campaigned to prevent a second attempt. His case served as a major point of contention regarding the state’s capability to carry out executions without violating the Eighth Amendment.

His survival highlights the severe psychological and physical damage that failed executions inflict. Whether through botched injections or malfunctioning equipment, the human cost of these procedures often extends far beyond the intended outcome, leaving survivors in a state of legal and physical limbo, waiting to see what the state will do next.

John Smith, a seventeenth-century English thief, holds the distinction of surviving multiple execution attempts. Initially sentenced to death in 1705, he was hanged for fifteen minutes without dying. The crowd and his family were in an uproar, and he was ultimately cut down, with his sentence eventually commuted, though he returned to his life of crime almost immediately.

His luck seemed to hold through multiple subsequent arrests. On one occasion, the prosecutor in his case died, leading to his release. In another instance, after being sentenced to penal transportation for stealing a padlock, he faced the judge again. His story is one of a man who repeatedly escaped the shadow of the gallows, leaving behind a legacy of unbelievable fortune.

Though he was eventually sent away from London, the mystery of what truly happened to him persists. His life serves as a strange, almost legendary narrative within the annals of criminal history, a man who seemed to exist outside the reach of the law’s most final punishment, no matter how hard the state tried to enforce it.

Joseph Samuel, a convict in 1803 Australia, faced perhaps the most bizarre series of failures in execution history. After being part of a group that committed a violent robbery and murder, he was sentenced to hang. However, three consecutive times the rope snapped or the noose failed, dropping him to the ground while his fellow criminals died.

The crowd witnessing the event began to believe it was a divine sign of his innocence. The executioner and the chief officials were left bewildered by the repeated failures, especially since the ropes had been tested to hold significant weight. Eventually, the governor was summoned and agreed that the failed attempts were a sign that the execution should stop.

His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was spared further harm. The case of Joseph Samuel is frequently cited as one of the most compelling examples of circumstances preventing an execution, demonstrating how even in the most rigid legal environments, the unexpected can force a sudden shift in destiny.

Finally, the story of Wenceslao Moguel illustrates the sheer brutality of firing squads and the resilience of the human spirit. During the Mexican Revolution, he was captured and sentenced to death. He was struck by eight to nine bullets and then received a final, close-range shot to the head to ensure he had perished.

Despite the intent of the soldiers, Moguel survived the massacre. He managed to crawl to a nearby church in the dark of night, where he was discovered and hidden until he recovered. He lived for many years afterward, physically scarred but alive to tell his story, becoming a symbol of endurance against the ultimate, lethal force of the state.

These ten stories collectively highlight the grim reality of the death penalty. They illustrate that despite modern efforts to create “humane” methods of execution, the system remains prone to deep, traumatic errors. For these individuals, surviving an execution was not the end of their struggle, but rather the beginning of a lifetime marked by the shadow of the state’s failed power.