Sexually Abused Teen Who Killed His Abuser Faces Execution Despite Inadequate Defense, Judge’s Conflict of Interest

Terry Williams was bare­ly 18 when he killed Amos Norwood, a man who had been sex­u­al­ly abus­ing him since Williams was 13. 

A recent arti­cle in Mother Jones dis­cuss­es how the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office — which cham­pi­oned the cause of sex­u­al abuse vic­tims dur­ing land­mark pros­e­cu­tions of sev­er­al cler­gy abuse cas­es — is aggres­sive­ly seek­ing to exe­cute Williams, employ­ing the very stereo­types about abuse vic­tims it pub­licly reject­ed in the cler­gy tri­als. At the time of those tri­als, D.A. Seth Williams said “[a]s we have learned, it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for sex­u­al abuse vic­tims to admit that the assault hap­pened, and then to actu­al­ly report the abuse to author­i­ties can be even hard­er for them.” But in Terry Williams’ case, the office has argued both that his silence dis­cred­its his claim of hav­ing been repeat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly abused and that the killing was a prod­uct of ​“gay-pros­ti­tute rage.” 

Williams nev­er met his court-appoint­ed lawyer until the day before his tri­al and, not trust­ing the lawyer, did not reveal his his­to­ry of sex­u­al abuse. Philadelphia pros­e­cu­tors knew that WIlliams had been sex­u­al­ly abused before and had evi­dence that Norwood had made sex­u­al advances toward oth­er young boys. Nevertheless, pros­e­cu­tors removed ref­er­ences to Norwood’s abu­sive pro­cliv­i­ties from sev­er­al wit­ness state­ments before pro­vid­ing san­i­tized ver­sions of those state­ments to Williams’ defense. 

In a sep­a­rate case, the same pros­e­cu­tor, Andrea Foulkes, had tried Williams for the mur­der of Herbert Hamilton, who had paid Williams for sex when Williams was a teenag­er. In that tri­al, the jury acquit­ted Williams, who was 17 at the time of that killing, of first-degree mur­der, after hear­ing evi­dence of Hamilton’s rela­tion­ship with Williams and con­vict­ed him of the less­er charge of third-degree murder. 

Judge Teresa Sarmina wrote, ​“The third degree ver­dict in the Hamilton case, col­ored Ms. Foulkes’ deci­sions when she pros­e­cut­ed [Williams] for the mur­der of Amos Norwood.” Despite her aware­ness of Norwood’s sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties, Foulkes told the jury Williams had killed him ​“for no oth­er rea­son but that a kind man offered him a ride home.” 

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille — the for­mer Philadelphia D.A. — refused to recuse him­self from WIlliams’ appeal, even though Castille had per­son­al­ly autho­rized Williams’ pros­e­cu­tion and, dur­ing his judi­cial elec­tion cam­paign, had trum­pet­ed his record of send­ing 45 peo­ple to death row. Norwood’s wid­ow joined more than 350,000 peo­ple in sup­port­ing Williams’ bid for clemen­cy, but the par­dons board­’s 3 – 2 rec­om­men­da­tion for clemen­cy fell short of the state’s unanimity requirement. 

Terry Williams faced an exe­cu­tion date of March 4, 2015, but was grant­ed a reprieve when Gov. Tom Wolf announced a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty in February. In October 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Williams’ chal­lenge to Castille’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in his appeal.