Pennsylvania's rusty machinery of death

Pennsylvania hasn't executed anyone since 1999, nor has it executed anyone still appealing his sentence since its current capital statute was reinstated in 1976. Of the three prisoners executed following their refusal to pursue further appeals, two were disturbed and mentally challenged, while the third and most recent, Gary Heidnik, was clearly insane.

These so-called volunteers are no less dead for that, but their executions, although marked by vigils, didn't generate any flurry of headline coverage or dramatic appeals for last-minute intervention by the courts.

The Terry Williams case is different. His execution has been scheduled for October 3, and he doesn't want to die.

There is no question of innocence here, as there was in the case of Troy Davis, who was executed last year in North Carolina even though almost all the witnesses against him at trial recanted their testimony, and Davis asserted his innocence up to the moment of his execution. No one disputes that Williams and an accomplice, Marc Draper, killed a man named Amos Norwood in 1984. Both Williams and Draper were 18 years old. Williams had committed a previous murder as a juvenile.

The only question is whether the jurors had full knowledge of the circumstances of that act, and whether their sentence was appropriate.

City of stone

Full disclosure here: I have known Terry Williams for several years through correspondence, and I've formed at least some opinion of the man he is now. I'm also an abolitionist. I don't mean to argue that position here, however (another time, if you like). The question at issue is whether, under the law as it exists, Williams's sentence was just and his execution warranted.

That was the issue before Pennsylvania's Board of Pardons as it conducted its first clemency hearing in half a century last Monday (Sept. 17) in Harrisburg. I have visited the state capitol before, but I'd never quite taken in the citadel of power that is the capitol complex before.

Unrelieved by even a tree, it is a city of stone, whose laws and judgments seem carved in stone. This impression is reinforced by the fresco, in the Supreme Court courtroom where the board met, of Moses receiving the stone tablets on which divine lightning is writing the law of laws.

Five fallible humans

The five very human board members who were to sit in judgment this day were Lieutenant Governor Jim Cawley, the board's chair; Attorney General Linda L. Kelly; and Harris Gubernik, Russell A. Walsh, and Louise B. Williams, respectively a corrections expert, a psychologist, and a victim's advocate. Their recommendation to Governor Tom Corbett isn't binding, but by a 1997 amendment to the state constitution it must be unanimous to be considered positive.

Thus, while a single jury vote can nullify what would otherwise be a verdict for guilt and death at trial, a single negative vote on the Board of Pardons tips the scales for death.

A further weight on the scale is the presence of the victim's advocate. Justice is meant to serve all, not particular individuals. When the victim is dead, his or her survivors are deemed to exercise his "rights." But rights, unlike estate, are not transferable; and survivors are usually the last persons to judge dispassionately, as the law requires.

As it happens, in Terry Williams's case, the widow of his victim, Mamie Norwood, has joined in the plea for clemency. More of that later.

Raped at age six

The Board of Pardons hadn't met for so long for purposes of clemency that one was literally stepping back into a previous century— for me, more like the 14th than the 20th. Lieutenant Governor Cawley announced the rules of procedure that would be followed, which included an hour of presentation time for the defense and its expert witnesses, followed by a rebuttal from those opposed to clemency, in this case Philadelphia Assistant District Attorneys Thomas Dolgenos and Bridget Kirn, this too not to exceed an hour.

Shawn Nolan, who has represented Williams since 1996, made an impassioned presentation for the defense. Terry Williams killed men who had sexually abused him, in Norwood's case even on the night before the murder. He had been beaten almost since birth, raped at the age of six by his stepfather, and thereafter handed around the neighborhood as a boy toy. Drugs and prostitution were his initiation into the adult world.

The defense's expert witnesses explained that, in cases such as Williams's, the trauma of childhood abuse was so deeply embedded that it was rarely acknowledged for years, only then emerging in bits and pieces. Terry's slow and tortured confession was entirely consistent with this pattern, they testified, as had been those of the victims in the Jerry Sandusky case. The very brutality of the murder made it evident that it was a crime of passion and rage, and not, as the prosecution had argued at trial, motivated by robbery.

Graphic details

The prosecution painted a very different picture. Dolgenos read out Williams's rap sheet to prove that he was a hardened criminal, and described Norwood's murder in graphic detail to demonstrate his depravity.

Williams had not pleaded abuse at his trial in 1986, nor at his evidentiary hearing in 1998, Dolgenos argued. He had concocted his story about Norwood only at this late date to save himself. He had tried to pin the murder on invented persons at his trial, and he remained, as he was then, a liar and a manipulator. No court had ever found his claims credible.

Dolgenos offered no expert testimony to rebut that of the defense, nor did he rebut any of the corroborating evidence of Williams's abuse and of his relationship with Norwood.

A neutral observer might have turned his argument on its head: If Williams were only concerned to save himself, why would he not have made the abuse argument, if not at trial, then certainly 12 years later in the evidentiary hearing? Why would he have concealed some of the most critical details until the last moment?

But the rules of the game permitted no cross-argument or rebuttal.

Daughter against mother

Prosecutor Bridget Kirn's job was to deflect Mamie Norwood's plea for Williams's life. This she did by stating that Norwood's daughter, Barbara, did wish to see him executed. Kirn spent a good quarter of an hour on Barbara Norwood's pain, grief and long-frustrated desire for justice. In the whole long story of Terry Williams's case, nothing I think can quite have matched this spectacle of trying to set daughter against mother.

The commissioners wanted to know why both parties hadn't come to testify in person. That would have been quite a show.

Also missing from the proceedings was the one person whom you might most have expected to see at a clemency hearing, the "applicant" himself. Perhaps Terry Williams might have wanted to plead for his own life?

The board members explained that they had interviewed him in prison. Public decorum would no doubt have been offended at the sight of the condemned. Executions used to be a public spectacle, of course. Spectators came to hangings with picnic baskets. But we do death differently now.

Death wins by losing

The commissioners retired to deliberate. They came back 35 minutes later. Chairman Cawley did not poll the members by name. They simply rendered their judgments in staccato syllables: no-yes-no-yes-yes. Three for life (Kelly, Walsh and Williams), two for death (Cawley and Gubernik). Under the rules, death won. Cawley asked the commissioners if any had any statement to make. None did.

At some future point, I like to think, such tribunals will be regarded as we do the heresy courts of the Middle Ages. A week from Wednesday, we will know whether Terry Williams will live awhile, or not.

People of conscience can differ about the death penalty. I've never yet met anyone on either side who's satisfied with the system as it is.♦


To read a follow-up article by Robert Zaller, click here.