This week in 1983

“Is it necessary to have the hood?”

— Robert W. Williams, convicted of murder, electric chair, Louisiana.
Executed December 14, 1983

Williams maintained that when he walked into the A&P supermarket to rob it, he never intended to shoot the on- duty security guard; he said that his sawed-off shotgun went off accidentally. Williams was the tenth prisoner executed since the federal government had reinstated the death penalty seven years earlier.