Oct. 24
OHIO----impending execution
Taft denies clemency to drug dealer who killed 4 people
Gov. Bob Taft formally denied clemency Monday to a death row inmate,
removing the last legal barrier to the man's scheduled Tuesday execution
for killing 4 men 14 years ago in an effort to take over the drug trade in
a Youngstown housing project.
Taft could have ordered a sentence of life in prison without parole for
Willie Williams Jr., 48, but Williams did not ask for it and the Ohio
Parole Board earlier had unanimously recommended against it. Williams has
shown no remorse for the killings, Taft said in a statement Prison
officials transferred Williams on Monday morning to the Southern Ohio
Correctional Facility in Lucasville, which houses Ohio's death chamber. A
prison spokesman said Williams was not saying much but appeared to be
handling the situation practically.
"He's positive right now," Larry Greene, an assistant to Warden Edwin
Voorhies Jr., said Monday afternoon.
Authorities suspected that 3 of Williams' victims in the Sept. 1, 1991
murders - William Dent, Alfonda Madison, and Eric Howard - were involved
in drugs. The fourth, Theodore Wynn, was a bystander who had recently
gotten out of the Air Force and was visiting Madison and Howard.
2 victims were strangled, and all were shot in the head.
Police arrested Williams shortly after the killings, but he escaped from
jail a month later. He was captured again three months later when he took
hostages in a juvenile jail in what authorities said was an attempt to
kill 3 youth accomplices in the slayings.
Relatives were to visit with Williams Monday evening, Greene said. He had
not requested a special meal for his supper.
Williams would be the 3rd man put to death in Ohio this year and the 18th
since Ohio resumed executions in 1999. 2 more inmates are slated for
execution next month.
(source: Associated Press)
