USA; ESECUZIONE IN TEXAS, 9^a DA INIZIO 2003

NEW YORK, 26 FEB - In Texas ha ricevuto l'iniezione letale un uomo condannato a morte per aver ucciso una donna in sedia a rotelle per conto di una coppia che voleva incassare la sua assicurazione.

   Richard Head Williams, di 33 anni, e' stato il nono detenuto messo a morte dall'inizio dell'anno dallo Stato del Texas.

   La sua vittima era una donna rimasta paralizzata quando il marito l'aveva ferita a colpi di pistola 22 anni prima. La coppia, Bruce and Michelle Gilmore, che l'aveva occasionalmente ospitata, aveva stipulato una polizza di assicurazione sulla sua vita e avevano offerto 12 mila dollari a Williams perche' la uccidesse.

   I Gilmore sono stati condannati all'ergastolo. 

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Houston man executed for stabbing disabled woman

A convicted burglar, arsonist and rapist was executed Tuesday night for fatally slashing and stabbing a wheelchair-bound woman in Houston less than a month after he got out of prison 6 years ago.

 Richard Head Williams was contrite and took responsibility for his crimes in a final statement seconds before the lethal drugs began flowing into his arms.

 "I'd like to apologize for all the pain I've caused," he said. Looking at 3 brothers of his victim, "I'm sorry I caused what happened to your sister. I apologize."

 He expressed love to his family and while acknowledging he made mistakes said, "I was not a monster like they claimed I was. I made a mistake and this mistake cost - but they won't cost no more."

 He gasped and wheezed several times as the drugs began taking effect and was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m., 7 minutes after the injection began.

 However, in a written statement released after his death, Williams complained about the criminal justice system in Texas that was supposed "to protect and uphold what is just and right."

 He added that the justice system has shown it's "just as crooked as I am said to be."

 In an interview earlier this month, Williams said he never saw or knew the victim, Jeanette Williams, 44, and that his criminal past earned him the trip to death row. The victim was not related to Williams.

 "The way I look at it, the whole trial was rehearsed," he said then. "They used everything I did in my life against me.

 "It had nothing to do with my case, but that's the way the system is designed, to get railroaded. I'm just a dumb black man with no money, caught in the system."

 "Then why did he give that confession?" said Vanessa Velasquez, the Harris County district attorney who prosecuted Williams. "I had hoped he would reconcile with his own guilt. That's unfortunate. I think he was a cold-blooded killer."

 The U.S. Supreme Court denied a late appeal for a stay. Williams' attorneys insisted he was mentally retarded and could not be put to death because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that barred execution of the mentally retarded.

 At his trial, testimony showed his IQ at age 6 was 93, well above the threshold of 70 for mental retardation, and an education diagnostician testifying for his defense acknowledged under cross-examination Williams was not retarded.

 "I'm not the brightest person in the world but I'm not the dumbest person in the world," Williams said.

 Authorities said Williams, who acknowledged being locked up most of the time since 1981, was given $400 to kill Jeanette Williams by a couple who had been caring for her intermittently and had taken out a $25,000 life insurance policy on her. Jeanette Williams was a crack addict who was paralyzed after she was shot by her husband 21 years earlier.

 Prosecutors said Richard Williams, who was promised $12,000 for the job, used a 9-inch steak knife supplied by the couple, Bruce and Michelle Gilmore, to kill the woman March 24, 1997 as she wheeled down a Houston street.

 "He slit a woman's throat who couldn't walk, was a paraplegic, from ear to ear, on a dark street," Velasquez said. "She fell out of the chair but that wasn't enough. He had to continue stabbing her. She was found laying in the road like a wounded dead animal, with her wheelchair thrown to the side."

 "I ain't did nothing to nobody," Williams contended, insisting he was in Louisiana at the time of the slaying, never received any money for the killing and "didn't know no Gilmores."

 "The whole thing is a setup," he said, also blaming his earlier incarcerations for "being at the wrong place at the wrong time."

 "There were cases I had nothing to do with, but I'm not a snitch," he said. "I wasn't going to rat on anyone."

 While in prison with a 10-year term for sexual assault, burglary and arson, records showed he had more than 100 disciplinary violations, including assaults and threats on corrections officers. He was discharged Feb. 28, 1997. Jeanette Williams was killed 24 days later.

 Bruce and Michelle Gilmore were convicted of capital murder for their part in the scheme and are serving life prison terms.

 Earlier Tuesday, a Dallas-area man, Michael Johnson, won a reprieve from a federal appeals court that halted his scheduled Wednesday execution for the 1995 fatal shooting of a gas station clerk near Waco.

 Williams becomes the 9th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 298th overall since Texas resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.

 Williams becomes the 59th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became Governor in 2001.

 Williams becomes the 13th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 833rd overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.