Jimmy L. Glass

Who was Jimmy L. Glass?

Jimmy L. Glass 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 and his wife, Erlene Nealy Brown, at their home in Dixie Inn outside Minden. The Browns' son, Gary Lamar Brown, was the son-in-law of Judge Charles A. Marvin 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".