Will Pennsylvania Execute a Man Who Killed His Abusers? | The Nation

15.9.12

Will Pennsylvania Execute a Man Who Killed His Abusers? | The Nation: “The problem I find with you, Mr. Williams, is you are a Jekyll and Hyde, apparently,” one judge told him. Tried as an adult for the Hamilton murder despite being 17 at the time, Williams was already in prison when he was sentenced to die for killing Norwood. “We were glad we did it,” one juror told the press.

Today, Williams, 46, is facing death by lethal injection. This August, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a warrant scheduling his execution for October 3. But in the meantime, the same jurors who sealed his fate have had a dramatic change of heart. At least five say that if they could go back, they would never have sent Williams to death row. That’s because they were never told a salient and deeply disturbing detail about his relationship with his victim. Williams, it turns out, had been violently and systematically raped by Norwood, beginning when he was 13 years old.