Jimmy L. Glass

Louisiana State Penitentiary, where Glass was confined and executed

Jimmy L. Glass (c. 1962 – June 12, 1987) was an American convicted murderer, executed by the state of Louisiana. He is probably best known not for his crime, but as petitioner in the U.S. Supreme Court case Glass v. Louisiana.

Glass' father worked in Arizona Chemical, where he was an instrument repairman. The company had a policy of hiring the children of employees as temporary summer laborers, including Glass.

Before committing a capital crime, Glass already had a criminal record. With fellow inmate Jimmy Wingo, Glass escaped from the Webster Parish, Louisiana Jail in December 1982 and, during their escape, they killed Newton Brown (born 1927) and his wife, Erlene Nealy Brown (born 1931), at their home in Dixie Inn outside Minden. The Browns' son, Gary Lamar Brown, was the son-in-law of Judge Charles A. Marvin (1929-2003) of the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit, based in Shreveport. Glass and Wingo were soon arrested. Both were sentenced to death in the electric chair.

Glass made a headlines in 1985 as a petitioner in a Supreme Court case. He argued that executions by electrocution violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution as "cruel and unusual punishment". But the Court, by majority 5-4, found that electrocution as an authorized method of executions is constitutional.

Glass was electrocuted on June 12, 1987 at the age of twenty-five and became the 78th person executed in the United States since 1977. Governor Edwin W. Edwards refused commutation of the sentence. Wingo was executed four days later, on June 16, 1987.

Glass's last words at execution were "I'd rather be fishing".

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General references

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