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Terry Williams Case Highlights the Need For Death Penalty Moratorium by David A.Love

  • David A. Love

Executive Director, Witness to Innocence

 

October 9, 2012 

When Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina stayed the execution of Terry Williams, she dealt a blow to the death penalty in Pennsylvania. Now the public has caught a glimpse of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence suppression in the application of the death penalty, and it isn’t pretty.

In her order, Judge Sarmina — a former prosecutor —issued a scathing indictment of the prosecutor in that case for hiding evidence that Amos Norwood was allegedly, a sexual predator who had molested Williams and other children.

Sarmina said “evidence has plainly been suppressed,” and accused former assistant D.A. Andrea Foulkes of engaging in “gamesmanship” and “playing fast and loose.” The judge also said Foulkes “had no problem disregarding her ethical obligations” in an attempt to win.

Given these developments, it is baffling that any governor or district attorney would want to hitch their wagon to the execution of Terry Williams.

The tainting of capital cases — the handiwork of renegade prosecutors, police officers and other actors in the criminal justice system — is part of the unseemly underbelly of the death penalty.

It is a broken, arbitrary system that discriminates against the poor and people of color. Over 130 capital convictions have been overturned in the Keystone state, the highest in the nation. And Pennsylvania’s death row population is nearly 70 percent of color, the highest percentage in the U.S., with the city of Philadelphia providing the bulk of the prisoners.

Executions are barbaric and a violation of international human rights law. And as Martin Luther King noted, “Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.” Moreover, innocent people are most certainly put to death.

Since 1973, 141 innocent men and women across the U.S. have been released from death row. They spent an average of ten years in conditions that can only be described as torture. Of these, six were wrongfully imprisoned on Pennsylvania’s death row. And official misconduct played a role in nearly all of their unjust convictions.

Nicholas Yarris, who was sentenced to death for the 1981 rape, abduction of murder of Linda May Craig in Delaware County, spent 22 years on death row before he was exonerated. His wrongful conviction was secured through perjured testimony of a jailhouse informant, and the refusal of the prosecution to hand over twenty pages of documents.

Wrongfully convicted of murdering a Philly mobster and a female companion, Neil Ferber spent fourteen months on death row. He was also the victim of false testimony from a jailhouse informant, and evidence of his innocence that was not handed over to his defense.

Harold Wilson, who was sentenced to death for the murder and robbery of three people in South Philadelphia, was exonerated through DNA evidence after spending seventeen years in prison. In 2003 a court ruled that the prosecutor in the original trial had eliminated potential black jurors.

In 2000, William Nieves was acquitted by a Philadelphia jury for a 1992 murder someone else committed, yet for which he was convicted in 1994. His original defense lawyer was paid $2,500 and had no experience handling capital cases. When he was retried, Nieves’ new lawyer had access to evidence that had been withheld from the defense. Nieves died of liver problems in 2005 due to improper medical treatment while in prison.

Thomas Kimbell was convicted of four murders in 1998, despite no evidence or eyewitnesses linking him to the crimes. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2000 because the trial judge had unfairly excluded evidence pointing to his innocence. Kimbell was acquitted of all charges after a retrial in 2002.

Sentenced to die for a 1979 triple murder, Jay C. Smith was released in 1992. The state’s high court found that the D.A. had committed “egregious” misconduct by withholding crucial evidence.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations — a database of 973 of the 2,000 criminal exonerations over the past 23 years, including 32 exonerations in Pennsylvania — official misconduct was the second most common factor associated with murder exonerations in America, occurring in 56 percent of cases. Perjury and false accusations were found 64 percent of the time, followed by mistaken witness identification (27 percent), false confessions (25 percent) and false and misleading forensic evidence (23 percent).

With 200 people condemned to death, Pennsylvania has the fourth largest death row in America. With no voluntary executions in the state in half a century, the tragic story of Terry Williams has reopened the debate on capital punishment. We do not know how many of death row inmates would be free or serving a lesser sentence, but for an ethically challenged prosecutor who believed in winning over seeking justice. Given what we know, now is as good a time as any to shut down Pennsylvania’s broken death machine.

David A. Love is the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence, a national nonprofit organization that empowers exonerated death row prisoners and their family members to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty.

Follow David A. Love on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidalove

Phila. prosecutor calls death-penalty plea by Terrance Williams bogus. “Its a complete lie” Andrea Foulkes said..

Update september 24, 2012

An accomplice who feels he was shafted after cutting a deal with Philadelphia prosecutors nearly 30 years ago tried Monday to save the life of the man against whom he testified.

Terrance “Terry” Williams, 46, is set to be the first person executed in Pennsylvania in 50 years who has not given up his appeals. A divided state pardons board rejected his bid for clemency last week but may revisit his case before the scheduled Oct. 3 execution.

Williams is on death row for killing 56-year-old Amos Norwood three months after turning 18 — and five months after killing another older man.

Williams now says both victims had sexually abused him. And his lawyers say prosecutors knew that before trial, yet failed to disclose the information to Williams’ trial lawyer or the jury.

“The arbitrary and capricious nature of the death penalty is exemplified, to me, by this case,” said Marc Bookman, executive director of The Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, a nonprofit death penalty resource center in Philadelphia. “No one would say that this guy should be the first guy executed (in recent years), that he’s the worst of the worst.”

In court Monday, accomplice Marc Draper, a policeman’s son, told Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina that a detective coerced him into lying about the motive for Norwood’s death. He said he agreed to play up the robbery motive — he and Williams had stolen $20 and two credit cards after fatally beating Norwood at a cemetery — and avoid the sex angle.

“I was a sheep, to do anything that they wanted me to do. And I regret that. I’m almost embarrassed to say that, that I was so gullible,” Draper said.

Williams had sex with several older men for money or gifts, Draper said. The defense claims that Norwood, a church deacon, began having sex with Williams when the boy was 13. And they say prosecutors knew about the relationship and had at least one other molestation complaint about Norwood that was not disclosed.

Draper is serving life without parole after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. He said he was promised a parole hearing after 15 years if he cooperated, only to learn that in Pennsylvania, a life sentence means life.

On cross-examination, Draper got tangled up at times explaining his changing story. But even without his testimony, Sarmina could stay the execution if she finds prosecutors withheld evidence.

District Attorney Seth Williams, in a weekend opinion column in The Philadelphia Inquirer, called Terrance Williams “a brutal, two-time murderer” and dismissed the new evidence claims.

“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,” Williams wrote.

The five-member state pardons board, which includes Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley and state Attorney General Linda Kelly, plans to meet Thursday morning to decide whether to reconsider Williams’ clemency petition. If so, the hearing would be held Thursday afternoon.

Alternately, if Sarmina grants a stay, and the decision is not overturned, Williams’ death warrant would expire on Oct. 3. Gov. Tom Corbett would then have 30 days to issue a new death warrant, to be carried out within 60 days, if Williams is not pardoned or granted a life sentence.

There are 200 people on death row in Pennsylvania, but only three people have been executed since 1976.

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Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Death-row-inmate-gets-support-from-ex-accomplice-3888691.php#ixzz27TDdBxdQ

Septembre 24, 2012, http://www.sacbee.com

PHILADELPHIA — A hearing is set to continue Monday for a death-row inmate who could become the first person in Pennsylvania executed since 1999.

Forty-six-year-old Terrance “Terry” Williams now claims he was sexually abused for years by the man he admits beating to death in 1984 at the age of 18. He’s asked a Philadelphia judge to halt the scheduled Oct. 3 lethal injection based on new evidence about the victim and the key accuser.

The hearing was continued Thursday after nine hours of testimony. It’s scheduled to resume at 10 a.m. Monday.

One of the issues at Thursday’s hearing was whether prosecutors and homicide detectives withheld from Williams’ lawyers a statement that the killing was motivated by rage over sexual abuse. The jury was told it was over a robbery.

September 21, 2012 http://www.philly.com

The prosecutor who put Terrance Williams on death row denounced Williams’ admitted accomplice Thursday, rejecting as a lie the contention that Williams killed Amos Norwood in a sexual rage and that authorities ignored evidence of his motive.

“It’s a complete lie,” Andrea Foulkes said when asked about new statements by Marc Draper. Draper now says Foulkes and detectives ignored his information about a sexual motive behind the 1984 killing of Norwood, 56, in West Oak Lane.

Draper’s account of Williams’ alleged abuse by Norwood is the evidence being used by Williams’ lawyers to try to block his scheduled Oct. 3 execution.

Answering questions from Williams’ lawyer Billy Nolas, Foulkes said Draper “absolutely did not tell me this case was about Terry Williams having sex with Mr. Norwood.”

Draper, in affidavits provided this year in Williams’ defense, asserted that Foulkes and detectives told him to say Norwood was killed in a robbery.

Foulkes, now a federal prosecutor, testified for seven hours before Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina on a motion by Williams’ lawyers to stay his execution.

Draper, 46, who like Williams was an 18-year-old Cheyney University freshman in 1984, testified briefly and is scheduled to return when the hearing resumes Monday.

Williams, 46, has exhausted state and federal appeals and will be executed unless his legal team can convince Sarmina that newly discovered evidence merits an emergency stay.

Williams’ lawyers say that in addition to Draper’s claim of a sexual motive, the jury that condemned Williams to death should have known about Foulkes‘ promise to write to state parole officials describing Draper’s cooperation.

Foulkes acknowledged that she wrote the letter in 1988 and gave it to Draper’s father, George, a city police officer, to use when Marc Draper decided to try to get his life term commuted.

Foulkes conceded to Sarmina that in retrospect, she should have told the jury about the letter when she questioned Draper about the terms of his guilty plea.

But the prosecutor also said she made clear to Draper that a commuted sentence was a long shot and that he would serve decades in prison before it would be considered.

Sarmina puzzled aloud why Draper pleaded guilty to a crime that guaranteed him life in prison.

Foulkes said Draper might have faced the death penalty had he gone to trial, although the case against him was not as strong as the case against Williams.

“Basically, he really didn’t get a very good deal,” Foulkes said.

On that, Draper agreed. Testifying Thursday, Draper told the judge: “I guess, looking at my prosecution, I feel like I was wronged. I didn’t deserve to get a second-degree life sentence. I don’t think so.”

But Draper said his recantation was not based on anger but his rebirth as a Christian.

“As a man of faith, a man of God, I don’t want to see anybody die in that manner,” Draper said, referring to Williams.

Foulkes maintained that in trial preparation, preliminary hearings and Williams‘ 1986 trial, Draper never wavered in his account: Norwood was killed in a robbery, and he was appalled when Williams started beating Norwood with a tire iron.

In court filings Thursday, the district attorney’s office urged Sarmina to dismiss the bid for a stay of execution, saying the claims of sexual abuse had been heard and rejected by state and federal appeals courts.

Draper raised Foulkes‘ promise of support for parole in 2000, prosecutors argued.

After the hearing, Deputy District Attorney Ronald Eisenberg repeated that “none of this is new.”

“The issue of his alleged new information is not new,” Eisenberg said. “This defendant has always had it with him and if he wanted to, he could have brought it up at trial.”

Eisenberg referred to Foulkes‘ testimony that Williams never raised the issue of sexual abuse by Norwood at his trial. Instead, Foulkes testified, Williams testified that he was not there and that Norwood was killed by Draper and another person.

Norwood, a volunteer at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Germantown, was found in Ivy Hill Cemetery, his body charred beyond recognition and his skull shattered by a tire iron.

The use of some of Norwood’s stolen credit cards eventually led police to Draper, who implicated Williams and agreed to testify at two murder trials in which Williams was the accused killer.

While Draper was being questioned in the Norwood case, he told detectives that Williams had told him about a murder six months earlier: the Jan. 26, 1984, stabbing of Herbert Hamilton, 50, of West Philadelphia.

The jury in the Hamilton case convicted Williams of third-degree murder, apparently believing Draper’s testimony that Williams killed Hamilton because the older man tried to force him to have sex.