Judge hears retrial motion

Judge Bill Wright made no immediate ruling Friday on whether Wesley Jonathan Williams will get a new trial.
Williams was convicted Oct. 2 of four counts of first degree murder and three counts of aggravated child abuse in the March 2005 deaths of ex-girlfriend Danielle Baker and her three young sons. Williams fathered the two oldest boys.
“The trial took two weeks; I’m not going to decide this in two minutes,” Wright told defense attorney Walter Smith and prosecutor Larry Basford after they presented their arguments concerning the motion.
Having said that, the judge moved on to another subject: the penalty decision he will have to make if he determines no new trial is warranted.
In about two weeks, he is expected to take up that issue, if the jury’s convictions stand up under his review of evidence.
With both lawyers currently involved in a different murder trial, Wright gave them some extra time to prepare written arguments for or against the death penalty.
Wright said the state’s burden in seeking the death penalty ruling from him will be to present a compelling case that would show Williams’ “individual culpability” in the commission of the crime.
Playing into that difficulty for the state, is the fact that little physical evidence suggests Williams was present at or participated in the crime.
Also problematic for the state is the fact that one witness claims Williams confessed to the crime and said he acted alone, while two other witnesses said Williams confessed to being there, but not participating.
The defense pointed out that both versions can’t be true, and asserts that the state hasn’t proven beyond reasonable doubt that either is factual.
The judge must also weigh the dependability of each version.
The witness claiming Williams confessed to committing the crimes said at trial that he’d lied to officers the first time he was interviewed, initially trying to clear his friend of suspicion.
Wright learned several things Friday that didn’t come in as evidence during the trial.
What jurors didn’t hear at trial, but which was revealed at the hearing, is that the witness passed a lie detector test after his first statement claiming no knowledge of any involvement by Williams.
Wright also learned something jurors never knew about the other version of events.
At trial, jurors learned that law enforcement witnesses who say Williams admitted being at the scene hadn’t taped Williams’ statement. Their testimony was essentially limited to that single confession.
Jurors didn’t hear during the trial that Williams immediately invoked his right to a lawyer after telling Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen he was at the scene. But Basford brought that up when speaking to the judge Friday.
Whether Wright will consider those new piece of information in his weighing of matters was not made clear by the judge.
The litmus test for the death penalty, Wright said, would be whether the state can put something together that would hold up under Supreme Court review.
If Williams is sentenced to death in the circuit court, he has an automatic appeal to that higher court.