Victim's widow asks Pennsylvania not to execute teen killer

Terrance Williams

PHILADELPHIA — The widow of a man killed by a teenager in 1984 wants Pennsylvania authorities to spare the killer a scheduled Oct. 3 execution.

Terrance Williams is on death row for fatally beating Amos Norwood with a tire iron in Philadelphia when Williams was 18. Defense lawyers say the 56-year-old Norwood had been sexually abusing Williams for five years after meeting him through church.

Mamie Norwood has come to forgive Williams after years of anger and resentment, according to an affidavit filed Thursday as part of Williams' clemency petition. The execution would also violate her religious beliefs, she said.

"The time around Amos' murder was unbearable for me," Norwood, 75, said in the affidavit signed in January. "But then several years ago I accepted that my husband's death at the hands of Terry Williams could not be changed. Amos was not coming back. I knew I had to find a way to heal."

"I do not wish to see Terry Williams executed," she wrote. "He is worthy of forgiveness and I am at peace with my decision to forgive him."

Her affidavit does not address Williams' abuse claims. Defense lawyers said Norwood is not giving media interviews, and she does not have a listed phone number.

Williams is now 46. He's also serving a separate term of up to 27 years for killing another alleged abuser when he was 17.

He has exhausted his death-penalty appeals, but is seeking a stay of execution on grounds the trial jury did not hear about the alleged abuse. Gov. Tom Corbett signed the warrant last month, setting up his execution date.

Pennsylvania, though, has not put anyone to death since 1999 and has not executed anyone fighting execution since 1962, according to Williams' lawyer, Shawn Nolan of the federal public defender's office in Philadelphia.

Prosecutors are expected to file a response to the defense bid for a stay by next week, when a Philadelphia judge is scheduled to weigh the matter. A lead prosecutor on the case did not immediately return a call for comment.

Williams alleges he was sexually abused by five different people, starting at age 6, and grew up in a physically abusive home. Childhood friends, neighbors and relatives support claims of a violent childhood, which the jury did not hear about during the brief sentencing phase. Several jurors now say the abuse claims would have led them to vote for a life sentence.

Appeals courts have found his trial lawyer was remiss in not raising them, but said it wasn't enough to overturn the death sentence.

Source: The Associated Press, September 6, 2012

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