Death Penalty

[xoxoxoBruce]

I've always been in favor of the death penalty. I still am for all the reasons I've stated here before. And the belief from following some of the cases with a personal interest, that all prisoners subjected to the death penalty have tons of legal representation and numerous appeals that eliminate any arguments.

BUT, this case has shaken my foundations... violently.

Pennsylvania is preparing to execute Terrance "Terry" Williams, a man who suffered years of physical and sexual abuse by older males, eventually killing two of his abusers while in his teens.

Mr. Williams, known to his friends and family as “Terry,” is on death row for a crime he committed three and one-half months after his 18th birthday. On that tragic day, Terry and another teenager killed a man. As the sentencing jury heard, Terry also committed another killing five months earlier at the age of 17. What the jury did not hear was that both of the men had sexually abused Terry, and both crimes directly related to Terry’s history of sexual abuse by older males, which began when he was six years old.

Terry's case has been the subject of an unprecedented outpouring of support from prominent groups and individuals across Pennsylvania. Child advocates, victims' rights groups, former prosecutors, former judges, faith leaders, mental health professionals, law professors and others have expressed their support for commuting Terry's sentence to life without parole.

​Like so many adolescent victims of sexual abuse, Terry felt intense shame that kept him from talking about what had happened to him. Terry's history of sexual abuse was not presented at his capital trial because Terry’s lawyer failed to conduct any meaningful investigation into Terry's background and ignored obvious evidence of abuse.

While courts agreed that Terry's lawyer failed him, those courts also said that evidence of sexual abuse would not have made a difference to the jury. However, in sworn affidavits, jurors who sentenced Terry have acknowledged that they would not have voted for a death sentence had they known about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child, the abuse he suffered at the hands of the men he killed, and the psychological impact of that abuse.

In addition, several jurors have stated that they voted for Terry to be put to death only because they mistakenly believed that if they did not sentence Terry to death he would later become eligible for release on parole. In truth, both now and at the time of his sentencing, a life sentence in Pennsylvania meant that Terry Williams would never have been eligible for parole.

Unfortunately, Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that does not require the judge to instruct the jury that a life sentence means life without the possibility of parole, and no such instruction was given in Terry’s case.

There are petitions for clemency from the jurors, the victim's widow, and numerous other interested groups.

I've signed the online petition for clemency.