Gruesome Gertie

Gruesome Gertie was the nickname given by death row inmates to the Louisiana electric chair.

Eugene Johnson, a black man convicted of robbing and murdering Steven Bench, a white farmer who lived near Albany, was the first to die in Louisiana's electric chair; he was electrocuted in the Livingston Parish Jail on September 11, 1941.

From passage of legislation in 1991 until 2024, the State of Louisiana opted for the use of lethal injection as the sole method of execution.

"Gruesome Gertie" is also infamous for having the first known incident of a failed execution by electrocution in the United States.

[2] "Gruesome Gertie" is also mentioned in James Lee Burke's novel "A Private Cathedral."