Sept. 23
CALIFORNIA:
Former death penalty supporters now working against it----A lawyer, a county
supervisor and a retired San Quentin Prison warden are backing Proposition 34,
which would make life without possibility of parole California's toughest
punishment.
Donald Heller wrote the 1978 ballot measure that expanded California's death
penalty. Ronald Briggs, whose father spearheaded the campaign, worked to
achieve its passage. Jeanne Woodford, a career corrections official, presided
over four executions.
The lawyer, El Dorado County supervisor and retired San Quentin Prison warden
now want California's death penalty abolished, contending the state no longer
can afford a system that has cost an estimated $4 billion since 1978 and
executed 13 prisoners.
"We started with six people on death row in 1978, and we never thought that
there would one day be 729," said Briggs, a conservative Republican. "We never
conceived of an appellate process that is decades long."
Backing Proposition 34, which would make life without possibility of parole the
state's toughest punishment, the three have joined with retired Los Angeles
County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti to try to dismantle a system in which each has
played a role.
Death penalty supporters concede the system is not working but argue that cost
estimates are inflated and that changes in law and court rulings could speed up
the process. Mend it, don't end it, the opponents of Proposition 34 argue.
They insist that executions could resume if the state were to move quickly to
adopt a 1-drug method of lethal injection.
A federal judge in 2006 halted executions out of concern that the state's
3-drug method might cause excruciating pain in violation of the constitutional
prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. A state judge who examined
subsequent revisions to the state's execution method ruled that the required
administrative procedures had not been followed.
Although some polls show narrow majorities of Californians prefer life terms to
executions, the political odds this November favor supporters of capital
punishment, according to analysts. California voters tend to be liberal on
candidates but conservative on propositions, passing only about a third of
them.
Whatever the outcome, the debate over Proposition 34 has shown that forces once
solidly behind capital punishment are now splintered, in part because of the
system's costs and the relatively few executions.
Heller said he began speaking out against capital punishment after coming to
believe that California had executed a "factually innocent" inmate. Even before
that 1998 execution, Heller was having doubts, he said. He had become a defense
lawyer and saw attorneys he considered "marginal" assigned to represent capital
defendants.
Woodford's Roman Catholic upbringing had long made her leery of capital
punishment, but she said she did not become passionate about the issue until
after she saw executions up close. On execution nights, she met with family
members of condemned inmates' victims.
"When you meet prior to the execution, they are looking at you with such hope,
that this is somehow going to make them feel better," she said. "And then
afterward, looking in their faces, it seems like it clearly didn't give them
what they were looking for. What is closure? I don't think it is watching an
individual get a needle in his arm and go to sleep."
Most experts believe that if Proposition 34 is rejected, executions won't
resume for at least another year. Only 14 of the 729 death row inmates have
exhausted their primary appeals. But barring last-minute reprieves, those 14
could be put to death relatively quickly, death penalty backers said.
The Proposition 34 campaign, managed by an ACLU policy director, has focused
more on the cost than the ethics of capital punishment. The campaign cites a
study that estimated that between now and 2050, the death penalty will cost
California as much as $7 billion more than life without parole.
The study said more than 740 additional inmates will be added to death row in
those years, while more than 500 condemned prisoners will die of old age or
other causes.
California's legislative analyst has said annual savings from Proposition 34
could start at $100 million and reach $130 million. The savings are attributed
to cheaper trials, less expensive incarceration and fewer appeals. Opponents of
Proposition 34 counter that healthcare for lifers could eat up those savings.
Death row inmates would have their sentences converted to life without parole,
be moved into the general prison population and be expected to work.
Proposition 34 also would give law enforcement agencies grants totaling $100
million over 4 years for murder and rape investigations, an amount a spokesman
for the "No on 34" campaign dismissed as "budget dust."
In ballot materials, the opposition argument implies the measure would cost,
rather than save. "California is broke," the argument says. "Prop. 34 costs
taxpayers $100 million over four years and many millions more, long term."
Opponents include county prosecutors, police and sheriff associations, and
former Govs. Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian. They are being vastly outspent
by proponents, but the sums are relatively small on both sides.
Supporters have reported raising about $5.4 million so far - $1.5 million was
spent to qualify the measure for the ballot - and opponents have raised
$229,748.
Bob Stern, a political analyst, described a $5-million budget for a ballot
measure as a "pittance." Voters who are unfamiliar with a measure or are
uncertain vote no, he said. Still, he said the emphasis on cost could produce a
close vote.
Several states have abandoned the death penalty, primarily because of its costs
or fears that innocent people might be executed. Oregon is the only state in
which voters have repealed the death penalty; they later reinstated it.
In California, no one executed in recent years was later proved innocent. But
Heller, the author of the death penalty law, and some federal judges believe
that Tommy Thompson may not have committed the crime that sent him to the death
chamber in 1998.
Thompson was found guilty of raping and murdering Ginger Fleischli in 1981. The
9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, and the U.S.
Supreme Court later reinstated it on procedural grounds.
Questions about possible innocence and cost-benefit analysis may not be enough
to change minds about capital punishment, however.
A California poll showed that in the days after a mass shooting at a Colorado
movie theater on July 20, support for the death penalty jumped.
Trying to keep the focus on the criminals, opponents of Proposition 34 are
reminding voters that inmates Richard Allen Davis - the murderer of 12-year-old
Polly Klaas - Night Stalker Richard Ramirez and serial killer Charles Ng will
never be executed if the death penalty is abolished.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
PENNSYLVANIA----impending execution
Why must we go through this again? The death penalty deters no one, is morally
dubious and costs a bundle
Here we go again, arguing over a death penalty case when life without parole
would punish the offender just as surely and afford society just as much
protection.
Equally important, it would eliminate the time and expense of a death row
appeal, not to mention the moral quagmire of executing someone whose childhood
was shaped by beatings and sexual abuse.
The subject this time is Terrance Williams, 46, of Philadelphia. In 1984, at
age 18, he beat 54-year-old Amos Norwood to death. The jury convicted him of
1st-degree murder and sentenced him to death.
The jurors were never told that Williams had been sexually abused for years by
the victim, and by a teacher, as well as by an older boy who first raped him
when he was 6.
5 of the jurors later signed statements that they would have voted for life in
prison without parole if they had known all the facts.
In a separate trial, Williams also was convicted of killing Herbert Hamilton
earlier that same year. Court testimony indicated that the victim, 50, had made
sexual advances toward him.
Clearly, Williams is dangerous. His history of abuse is tragic and explains a
lot about his violent behavior, but it doesn't make him any less a threat to
society. Yet that threat can be dealt with just as effectively -- and at less
expense -- with a life sentence as it can with the death penalty.
Because of his history of abuse, Williams has become something of a cause
celebre. His lawyers say 286,000 people signed a petition asking Gov. Tom
Corbett and the state Board of Pardons to commute his sentence to life without
parole. Signatories include religious leaders, mental health professionals and
child advocates who contend that his crimes were the result of a hellish
childhood.
"Terry's acts of violence have, alas, an explanation of the worst sort,"
advocates for children said in a letter asking for clemency. "Terry lashed out
and killed 2 of the men who sexually abused him and caused him so much pain."
Nevertheless, the governor signed Williams' death warrant on Aug. 9 and the
Board of Pardons rejected his a plea for clemency last week. 3 of the 5 board
members voted in the inmate's favor -- including Attorney General Linda Kelly
-- but a recommendation to commute a death sentence has to be unanimous. In any
case, the governor is not required to follow the board's recommendation.
Williams' execution by lethal injection is scheduled for Oct. 3. He would be
the 1st person put to death in Pennsylvania since 1999.
One of those opposing execution is Charles J. Chaput, the Roman Catholic
archbishop of Philadelphia, where the church has been struggling with cases of
child sexual abuse by some of its priests. On the archdiocese website, the
archbishop wrote that execution would teach the "wrongheaded lesson of violence
'fixing' the violent among us."
Even Mamie Norwood, the widow of one of his victims, asked for clemency in a
signed declaration filed with the court. She wrote that after years of anger
and resentment toward Williams, she decided to forgive him in order to have a
"peaceful and happy" life.
"I do not wish to see Terry Williams executed," she wrote, because it would "go
against my Christian faith and my belief system."
Religious principles aside, Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina granted
an emergency hearing for a stay of execution on claims that the prosecutor
wrongly withheld evidence of the inmate's history of sexual abuse by the
victim.
Among the defense witnesses is Marc Draper, Williams' accomplice, who is
serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and
testifying against Williams. Draper, 46, signed a sworn statement that he was
ordered by the prosecutor to say that Williams killed Norwood in a robbery, not
in a rage over years of being sexually abused by him.
Prosecutors have rejected the claim, pointing to various courts that dismissed
it. The hearing continues on Monday.
Maybe Draper is telling the truth, maybe not. But it wouldn't matter if capital
punishment was not on the table. Williams would be doing life, end of story. No
death-sentence appeals, no petitions for clemency, no emergency hearings
seeking stays of execution, no revisiting testimony.
It bears repeating that there's also the added expense of death row, where
inmates are housed in single cells that cost the state more than double cells.
Security costs are higher, too -- inmates must be accompanied by 2 guards every
time they leave their cells, handcuffed and shackled. Spending money this way
while schools and other public services are starved for funding is pointless
and counter-productive.
Capital punishment is not a deterrent. States that execute people have higher
homicide rates than those that don't. So why pursue it, other than revenge?
All the evidence shows that the death penalty is more trouble than it's worth,
and that includes the impending lethal injection of Terrance Williams. It's
past time for the law to catch up to reality.
(source: Opinion; Sally Kalson is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
****************************
Public support for the death penalty 'is not what it used to be,' expert says
Though most Americans still favor the death penalty, public support for
executions has dropped in the past few years.
Recent disclosures indicating death row convictions were made erroneously have
caused many citizens to be more reticent about putting a convicted killer to
death.
"The death penalty is not what it used to be in terms of public opinion," said
Frank Baumgartner, an expert on capital punishment at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and the former head of political science at Penn State.
"People are not as certain about all these cases," he said. "A majority of
Americans still are happy to see an execution go forward, it's not as many as a
while ago because of the problems of innocence."
A Gallup poll in 2011 shows 61 % of Americans surveyed favor the death penalty,
a solid majority to be sure. But that figure represented a 39-year low.
In Pennsylvania, the issue is murkier.
Only 3 convicts have been put to death since the punishment was reinstated in
1976.
Terrance Williams could become the 1st person executed in Pennsylvania in 13
years. Williams faces the death penalty for killing a Philadelphia man in 1984.
His attorneys argue that Williams should be spared because the victim sexually
abused him for years.
"Pennsylvania has not been an execution state traditionally," said Robb Austin,
a former Democratic state legislator now working as a Republican media
consultant. "It has not been an issue in the public domain. I don't think it
would rise to the level of a campaign issue."
A social media campaign to spare Williams' life has garnered hundreds of
thousands of signatures.
If Williams is put to death, political analysts don't see it having a big
effect on state elections in November, for either Democratic or Republican
candidates.
And in an election year where the nation's stagnated economy is the 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd most important issue on voters minds, few see the execution pushing
capital punishment back into the national political dialogue.
"People are just so focused on having a job that issues like the death penalty
just don't register," said Chris Durlak, a Washington-based Democratic media
consultant who was a top aide to the Pennsylvania House leadership in the
1990s.
"Social issues like the death penalty and abortion have kind of taken a back
burner and are not on the country's radar at all. It's only an issue that the
fringes of political parties focus on."
Still, if the execution goes forward as scheduled on Oct. 3, it would take
place the same day as the 1st debate between President Barack Obama and
Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
And with Pennsylvania still tenuously considered a swing state, the execution
could find itself a topic in the debate.
"It could be a reporter question," said Austin. "At that point, it's
intersected into the presidential campaign and it's there."
An execution during the 1992 presidential campaign threatened to affect the
election, but then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton defused the situation.
"He made a point to interrupt his campaign to be present in the governor's
mansion to make sure the execution went forward," said UNC's Baumgartner.
"We've come a long time from that period. People's concern has shifted from
making sure they're carried out to making sure we do so fairly."
With that evolution on popular sentiment, most political observers doubt the
Oct. 3 execution - if it happen - will register on the presidential campaign.
"If crime and capital punishment were topics high on the radar scene, there
could be a collateral effect," said David Thornburgh, executive director of the
Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania. "But I'm just
not seeing a thread that that issue feeds."
Gov. Tom Corbett, who signed the death warrant for Williams, likely won't face
too much political fallout if the execution takes place.
He's not up for re-election until 2014. But Corbett might find the issue
revisited when he's running again.
"The consultants will go back and pull from various circumstances to try and
create a contrast or a message," Thornburgh said.
***************************
Complexity of Terrance Williams case has been revealed as lawyers try to
prevent his execution
Angel by day, ravening animal at night.
The radical mutability of some among us - and our inability to detect it until
it's too late - has haunted human cultures for millennia.
To most everyone in the Germantown area of north Philadelphia in the early
1980s, Terrance "Terry" Williams was an angel.
He was smart, well-behaved and polite. As star quarterback of the Germantown
High School football team, he took the Bears to their 1st Public League
championship in nearly 50 years.
A yearbook photo shows him well dressed, bright-eyed, and full of promise - the
image of innocence.
But there was another side to Williams known only by a select, degenerate few.
He was having sex with old men for cash. He took the money gambling, and when
he ran out, he committed armed robbery and eventually, murder.
On a January evening in 1984, Williams, then 17, was naked in bed with
50-year-old Herbert Hamilton in the older man's Walnut Hill apartment.
Williams stabbed Hamilton 21 times with a butcher knife, leaving the knife
plunged clean through Hamilton's neck. Williams also bludgeoned Hamilton with a
baseball bat.
His bloody palm print on the bat eventually led to his conviction. Before
leaving with a phone card, pills and other items pilfered from the apartment,
Williams poured kerosene from a nearby heater onto the body and tried
-unsuccessfully - to light it with matches.
5 months later, on the night of June 11, 1984, Williams and Marc Draper - a
friend since elementary school and fellow Cheyney University student - lured
56-year-old Amos Norwood into the Ivy Hill Cemetery. Ostensibly, it was to rob
him for cash for gambling.
Instead, Williams stripped Norwood, tied him with his clothes, crammed a sock
in his mouth and bludgeoned him with a tire iron, exhorting Draper to join in
with a socket wrench, which he did.
They took Norwood's cash, credit card and phone card and drove off in Norwood's
blue Chrysler LeBaron. Williams returned, doused the body in gasoline and
torched it. The next morning, they went with a friend to Atlantic City.
The friend used the phone card, and the game was up.
Williams had just turned 18 when he killed Norwood. Draper, the son of a
Philadelphia city cop, entered a plea deal to testify against Williams, who was
convicted of both murders.
Williams was sentenced to death in the Norwood killing.
The ravening beast had been removed from among us.
Justice, it seemed, had been done.
But the case wasn't nearly so simple.
Terry Williams wasn't the only one with a hidden animal nature.
The complexities of the case have emerged in vivid detail as Williams' lawyers
try to prevent his execution.
Williams is scheduled to be put to death on Oct. 3.
Arguing that Williams was sexually abused and exploited for years, the defense
attorneys contend that he should spend the rest of his life in prison, but he
doesn't deserve lethal injection.
A hearing that could spare his life continues in Philadelphia Monday.
'IT WASN'T A PRETTY PICTURE'
What goes unsaid in a courtroom can be just as important as what's spoken
aloud.
There was much that went unsaid in Williams' 2 trials, both by the defense and
clearly - after a hearing in Philadelphia on Thursday - by the prosecution.
At the Hamilton murder trial, the prosecution presented evidence of Williams
being a teenage male prostitute.
"If you could afford him, he'd go with you," said Draper. He added that
Williams had sex with men for the money, not for fun.
Hamilton was known to have a smarmy side. Photos of naked teenage boys
performing sex acts were found in the apartment. Draper's roommate at Cheyney
was Hamilton's "lover," having lived with the man since his mid-teens.
The prosecution told the jury that Williams killed Hamilton because Hamilton
had let it slip to Draper that he'd bedded the former star quarterback, and
Williams was furious the old man had run his mouth.
It was a hustler homicide.
But there's another way of seeing that "relationship" - one adopted by at least
1 of the jurors in the case.
Is the 17-year-old a predatory hustler, or is the 50-year-old giving him cash,
performing sex acts on him and taking photographs something more sinister?
Hamilton, who claimed to be an ex-cop and who ran a variety store in his
neighborhood, was adored by the basketball team at Ben Franklin High School. He
was their biggest fan, buying the team warm-up suits and a van.
Some of the players later said they knew where to go - and what to do - if they
needed some cash. Prosecutors knew Hamilton not only liked to have sex and take
pictures, he liked to watch others have sex and cheer them on with obscenities
while fondling himself.
Records show that Hamilton also "shared" his boys with at least 1 other older
man.
That man was one of the people Williams robbed at gunpoint.
Hamilton also illegally peddled valium and other pills to young men.
The prosecutor in the case admitted last week, "It wasn't a pretty picture."
All those details didn't go before the jury, but at least 1 juror apparently
sensed them and acted accordingly.
Prosecutors had filed to seek the death penalty for Williams in both trials,
but the jury did not convict Williams of 1st-degree murder in the Hamilton
case. The sex elements disturbed at least 1 juror so much that Williams was
convicted instead of murder in the 3rd-degree.
That would not happen in the Norwood case 6 months later.
JURORS' REGRETS
The 2nd time around, prosecutors kept the sex element to a minimum.
But it was there.
Draper testified that Williams targeted Norwood because he knew him, and knew
he could get money from him.
He said Williams told him he would threaten to tell Norwood's wife that he was
gay.
It's now clear that prosecutors also knew - but did not reveal to the defense
or to the jury - that Norwood had a history of "incidents" with young boys.
Norwood was a deacon at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Germantown, director of
the Youth Theater Fellowship and leader of the altar boys.
The prosecutor in the case, Andrea Foulkes, claimed under oath last week that
she could never find any evidence of sex in the Norwood case, even though, she
said, she was actively seeking it for a motive similar to the Hamilton case.
However, Foulkes' personal notes show - in her own handwriting - that she knew
a mother in the congregation claimed Norwood had touched the genitals of her
16-year-old son.
Foulkes also wrote, "Heard from others about possible incidents."
And, "Minister is 1 of Terry's johns."
When Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Teresa Sarmina put those notes on
the stand, Foulkes - who had testified confidently to that point - hesitated,
and said she didn't remember them.
The jury in the Norwood case found Williams guilty of 1st-degree murder, and
when it came time for them to consider the death sentence, Foulkes told them
all about how Herbert Hamilton had also died by Williams' hand.
But she didn't mention any of the sex stuff.
She simply said that "2 innocent men" were dead because of Williams.
The jury recommended death.
Today, 5 of those jurors say if they'd known about the sexual element, they
would not have done what they did.
Several of them also said they were under the impression that a death sentence
was the only way to ensure that Williams stayed in jail.
Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation where judges don???t have to tell
jurors that a life sentence means life without the possibility of parole.
HISTORY OF ABUSE
It's now evident that Williams had been the victim of child sex abuse and
domestic violence from a very early age.
More than a decade after his conviction, he began to tell psychologists of
incidents of abuse.
Multiple experts have testified that what he said - and the manner in which he
said it - is consistent with the delayed admission of such victims.
Both Gov. Tom Corbett and Attorney General Linda Kelly have expounded on the
difficulty of getting victims of child sex abuse to talk about it - even years
afterward - in light of the Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State. Sandusky will be
sentenced next month after a jury convicted him of sexually abusing 10 boys
over a period of years.
Kelly considered Williams' case in detail last week. As a member of the state's
Board of Pardons, Kelly voted for clemency, and 2 others on the 5-member panel
agreed with her.
But a unanimous decision was required to send a recommendation of clemency to
the governor.
Much of what Williams has claimed is substantiated by circumstantial and direct
evidence from other witnesses.
It appears he was 1st raped by an older boy at the age of 6.
He was beaten regularly by both his mother and an alcoholic, abusive
step-father, according to juvenile case records and other witnesses.
His siblings fled the house and joined the military.
Classmates from school recall seeing his mother beat the young Williams so hard
he left a blood trail as he fled.
One said Williams' mother screamed that he was going to become "a faggot, just
like your father" as she wailed on him.
It appears he was groomed for sex and then abused by 1 of his middle school
teachers, who bought him clothes, sneakers, bikes and anything else he might
want. Multiple witnesses testified they suspected an "inappropriate
relationship" between the teacher and Williams.
There's evidence he began to cut himself at this time.
There is now strong evidence that both men Williams killed had been having sex
with him beforehand.
Williams claims to have been servicing Norwood from the time he was 13.
An older boy who claimed to be Williams' secret "lover" in school testified
that Williams admitted to having sex with both the middle school teacher and
Norwood in exchange for cash and gifts.
1 of Williams' high school coaches testified that Norwood was known to have a
thing for young boys, and some parents would not let their children go on
outings with the man. He told an appellate court, "There are simply too many
homosexual elements with the (Norwood) killing for anyone to have simply
dismissed this case as a murder for money and credit cards."
Foulkes, the prosecutor, admitted to Judge Sarmina last week, "I can't say
(Norwood) didn't have a double life."
A FLAWED DEFENSE
Williams' lawyers in the Norwood case didn't meet him until the day before
trial.
They made no attempt to learn the details of the previous case, even though
they knew it would be used against him if he was convicted.
Both have since been disbarred for unrelated misdeeds.
Federal courts found that Williams' lawyers failed him. But under the law, they
deferred to the state Supreme Court's finding that the evidence of abuse and
sexual misconduct wouldn't have changed the jury's mind on the death penalty.
One of the state Supreme Court Justices who heard the case was Ronald Castille,
who had been Philadelphia District Attorney at the time of Williams' conviction
and who personally signed the authorization seeking the death penalty.
Castille did not recuse himself.
"It's not unusual for young men who've been sexually abused from an early age
to become a male prostitute," said Delilah Runburg, CEO of the Pennsylvania
Coalition Against Rape.
Runburg is one of scores of victim advocates, former prosecutors, judges and
law professionals who have joined to plead for clemency for Williams.
Even Norwood's widow says Williams should not be put to death.
Runburg cited a study by the Centers for Disease Control that found child sex
abuse - particularly ongoing abuse - impairs a child's ability to make good
decisions.
"It really changes the brain chemistry of children," she said.
Williams was able to succeed in school, in football and in convincing most
acquainted with him that he was destined to achieve great things. That's a
common trait of kids from dysfunctional homes, said Runburg, adding, "He did
not have the opportunity to develop that 'inner core.'"
The angel wasn't strong enough to control the animal.
That does not excuse murder, and no one is asking for Williams to be released.
Knowing what we do, it's not a question of uncaging Terry Williams.
The question is: do we kill him?
(source for both: The Patriot-News)
**********************
Brutal crimes, but the right sentence is life
As a child, Terrance Williams endured constant physical abuse and was sexually
assaulted by both his victims, his defense argues, important evidence that was
never presented at trial more than a quarter century ago. His legal
representation was so shoddy and inept that he received the death penalty
though he was barely an adult when he committed the crime.
Clemency is now supported by 5 former jurors, more than 360,000 petitioners,
Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, and the widow of one of the victims.
As a bright teenager, a hustler and thief, Terrance Williams committed two
murders so brutal - the second victim beaten to death with a tire iron, then
set on fire - that he should be executed, the prosecution contends.
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams remains resolute in upholding
capital sentencing. "The defendant has a long record of manipulative and
malevolent behavior which eventually led to the deaths of two men," the D.A.
stated, characterizing the recent abuse allegations as "a last-ditch effort"
based, in some cases, on "triple hearsay."
Having exhausted all state and federal appeals, Williams, now 46, is scheduled
to be executed by lethal injection Oct. 3. Last Monday, the pardons board voted
3-2 to stay the execution, the state attorney general voting with the majority.
But that doesn't matter because, in yet another ponderous aspect of our justice
system, a stay requires a unanimous vote.
Whatever the truth is in this case, and there's merit to both sides' arguments,
Williams should not die at the hands of the commonwealth. If we condemn murder,
we shouldn't impose it. Only 21 of almost 200 nations executed people last
year, according to Amnesty International, the United States in the top five
with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, countries we regularly denounce for
human-rights violations.
No one is arguing that Williams be set free, only that he serve life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Enforcing the death penalty, which is law in 33 states, has become an
expensive, exhausting, error-riddled, and futile practice.
The truth is that Pennsylvania condemns plenty of people to death, but rarely
kills them. Williams is the state's 1st prisoner scheduled to be executed in 13
years but the 1st against his own will since the Kennedy administration. The
last 3 inmates died at their own request or, as 1 court observer puts it,
"suicide by the justice system."
Yet our courts are clogged with appeals relating to 125 of the 200 prisoners
currently on death row, the 4th-highest death-penalty population in the nation.
Pennsylvania's reversal rate, cases sent back to court because of lousy defense
lawyering, is unparalleled. (Williams met his attorney, who was subsequently
disbarred, the week of trial.) That's due largely to the abysmal fees we pay
defense lawyers, recently raised to a flat rate of $10,000 per death-penalty
case, which, when done properly, requires countless hours of preparation.
Pennsylvania spends $46 million each year on legal costs and incarceration, the
Death Penalty Information Center estimates, funds that could be so much better
spent on education or law enforcement.
"It is important to note that all of these expenses are incurred in the many
death-penalty cases that never result in execution," the center's executive
director, Richard Dieter, testified in Harrisburg. "This often means that a
life sentence is the end result, but only after a very expensive death-penalty
process."
Marc Bookman of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation says: "The death
penalty is a failed government program. We're spending very little in the
beginning but a lot during the appeals process at the end, when the truth is it
should be reversed."
True enough. On Thursday, I sat in Judge M. Teresa Sarmina's courtroom, which
was packed with top attorneys for both sides, an Olympics of death-row
hearings. The original prosecutor was grilled for 7 hours about whether
evidence that Williams had been raped by victim Otis Norwood was withheld in
the original 1986 trial.
Without the death penalty, only life in prison without parole, no one would be
there debating an ancient murder case. Instead, the hearing continues Monday
with Williams' codefendant.
If Sarmina is unconvinced the evidence merits an emergency stay, defense
lawyers will surely appeal.
Meanwhile, Williams remains scheduled to be executed in 10 days.
(source: Column, Karen Heller----Philadelphia Inquirer)
******************************
Making the case for Williams' execution----Terrance Williams, 46, is scheduled
to be executed Oct. 3 for murder.
My office has been criticized for stating that Terrance Williams - a brutal,
2-time murderer whose case has been reviewed and upheld by every available
court - should finally be subject to the sentence of death he received from a
jury more than 25 years ago.
The case has received attention because of supposedly "new evidence" that
Williams was sexually abused by his victim and others. But the most noticeable
thing about this case is not the "new evidence." It's the willingness of some
people to believe every defense claim as if it were gospel truth - without even
taking the time to look at all the facts.
Here is what they show:
This is not Williams' only murder; it's his 2nd - and the other murder was at
least as calculated as this one. The evidence at trial established that
Williams was a quarterback on his college varsity football team. But he had a
double life he didn't want to come out: that he was a male prostitute with
numerous older clients.
When one of these men, Herbert Hamilton, started talking too openly about the
relationship, Williams told a friend that he was going to "take care of the
problem." Several days later, he agreed to have sex with Hamilton. But he had
carefully hidden a knife next to the bed. He pulled it out and stabbed
Hamilton. The victim managed to fight back and tried to hide in the kitchen,
but Williams chased him down, beat him with a bat, and stabbed him until he was
dead - leaving the knife stuck halfway through the victim's throat. Then he
tried to steal Hamilton's car.
A few days later, Williams told his friend that he had taken care of "the
problem."
Williams had a history of burglary and armed robbery even before he started
killing people. In 1981 he committed a residential burglary in Mount Airy. The
following year, he embarked on yet another home invasion. This time he chose
Christmas Eve to break into the house of an elderly couple asleep in bed. He
put the muzzle of a rifle to the woman's neck and fired 3 times above their
heads before ransacking the premises.
On another occasion, he broke into the home of a female friend and stole money
and 2 guns. Then, between the 2 murders, while out on bail, he robbed another
victim at gunpoint.
Now Williams says that he only killed his most recent victim, Amos Norwood, in
a "rage" because Norwood supposedly "raped" him the night before. But the story
keeps changing.
At the trial, Williams testified under oath that he wasn't even there.
A decade later, Williams started claiming that he had been abused by numerous
men in his life. But he neglected ever to mention anything about Norwood raping
him the night before the murder.
2 months ago, Williams finally described his supposed "relationship" with
Norwood. He said he'd repeatedly had sex with Norwood for money, taking as much
as $500 on 1 occasion. On the night before the murder, allegedly, he again
agreed to have sex with the victim, but Norwood was "rough" and Williams was
"hurt and mad."
Williams neglected to offer any account of how he came to be with Norwood the
following night, in a deserted cemetery, where he accosted the victim with an
accomplice, bound his hands and feet, gagged him with a sock, beat him to death
with a tire iron, burned his body to destroy any prints, and went on a gambling
spree in Atlantic City with the victim's car and credit card.
And just this month, the story changed again. This time Williams presented a
new version in which he agreed to have sex on the night of the crime, just
moments before the murder.
The murderer whose word is now accepted without question has a long history of
perjury and manipulation. In the Hamilton case, Williams left a fake
"confession" scrawled on a mirror in order to throw suspicion on another
suspect. When the ploy failed and he was arrested, he insisted that he hadn't
even been there. But when he found out there was a bloody palm print on the
baseball bat that exactly matched his own, he "remembered" that he was there,
but that it was "self-defense."
In this case, Williams got to the main witness, who was housed under protective
custody, and delivered a series of letters in which he directed the witness to
testify to various invented versions of the crime. The versions changed over
time as Williams thought of new ways to counter the commonwealth's case. Then,
for the trial, Williams actually manufactured and introduced a piece of fake
physical evidence. A witness had seen him wearing a pair of blood-spattered
sneakers shortly after the murder. Williams took a similar pair and sprinkled
them with ketchup, in an effort to convince the jury that the stains were not
blood, just condiment.
But perhaps the most shameless lie is Williams' insulting effort to compare
himself to the victims of Jerry Sandusky and clergy sex abuse. Those victims
were understandably afraid to say anything to anyone, ever.
Not Williams. He's been claiming sexual abuse as an excuse for his crimes for a
decade and a half, ever since his previous fabrications failed. There was a
neighbor boy, allegedly, and a friend, and a teacher, and his cellmates at the
youth detention center, all of whom supposedly took advantage of him.
The only claim he hasn't been making is the one he has suddenly unveiled now -
that 56-year-old, 130-pound Amos Norwood violently raped Williams, the college
quarterback, shortly before the murder. Only on the eve of execution does this
additional embellishment emerge.
I understand that people can have a reasonable debate about the death penalty.
But if we're going to have that debate, let's not dress it up in questionable
claims by a twice-convicted murderer who has tried every trick to escape his
sentence.
(source: Opinion, Seth Williams is district attorney of
Philadelphia----Philadelphia Inquirer)
*********************
Death penalty trial set in Pa. game warden's death
Opening statements are scheduled Monday in the death penalty trial of a man
accused of having killed a game warden in central Pennsylvania almost 2 years
ago.
The (Chambersburg) Public Opinion ( http://bit.ly/SMMLvo) says the trial of
29-year-old Christopher Johnson of Carroll Valley is set to begin in Adams
County Court.
Johnson is charged with 1st-degree murder in the shooting death of state
wildlife officer David Grove in November 2010. Officials say Grove was
patrolling a dark stretch of rural road near Gettysburg when he confronted a
poacher and was shot 4 times.
An out-of-town jury was brought in to hear the case after defense attorneys
argued that "pervasive and sustained" publicity had made it impossible for
their client to get a fair trial.
(source: Associated Press)
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