On August 8, Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania signed an exe­cu­tion war­rant for Terrance Williams for the 1984 mur­der of Amos Norwood. The exe­cu­tion was set for October 3. Although Gov. Corbett has signed 15 pre­vi­ous death war­rants, all of those dates have been stayed because the defen­dant had not com­plet­ed the ordi­nary appeals process. Williams’ death sen­tence and con­vic­tion, how­ev­er, were affirmed by the fed­er­al Court of Appeals and his case was denied review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Nevertheless, Williams’ case remains con­tro­ver­sial and his attor­neys have filed addi­tion­al peti­tions in state court. His attor­neys issued a state­ment in response to the death war­rant, not­ing that Williams had been sex­u­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly abused as a child and that he would be exe­cut­ed for killing two of those abusers. ​“Most Pennsylvanians would agree that the death penal­ty is the pun­ish­ment for the worst of the worst offend­ers, not for trau­ma­tized vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse who strike back at their abusers. Terry Williams’ sto­ry is one of hor­rif­ic child­hood sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse,” said Shawn Nolan, one of Williams’ attor­neys. Williams has expressed deep remorse for the mur­ders. Unfortunately, the jury at Williams’ tri­al, ​“didn’t hear about his abu­sive child­hood or that the two men he killed were two of his abusers. Also, jurors mis­tak­en­ly believed that if they sen­tenced Terry to life in prison he would be eli­gi­ble for parole. Several jurors now say they would have vot­ed for life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole instead of death if they had known this impor­tant infor­ma­tion,” accord­ing to the state­ment from the attorneys. 

For an ear­li­er offense com­mit­ted when he was sev­en­teen years old, Williams was con­vict­ed of the mur­der of a dif­fer­ent abuser, Herb Hamilton. Williams was bare­ly eigh­teen at the time of the mur­der of Amos Norwood. Marc Draper, the co-defen­dant in the Norwood mur­der, was the son of a Philadelphia police­man. He pled guilty to sec­ond-degree mur­der and received a life sen­tence in exchange for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Williams.

Pennsylvania has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1999. All three of the exe­cu­tions car­ried out since the rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty have been of inmates who waived remaining appeals.

(​“Governor Corbett Signs Execution Warrant for Philadelphia Killer, Office of the Governor,” PR Newswire, Aug. 9, 2012; Statement from Attorneys for Terrance Williams in Response to the Setting of an Execution Date, Aug. 9, 2012). See Arbitrariness and Representation.

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