Team of Lawyers Seeks Retrial on 2 Atlanta Murders
A team of attorneys went to court Monday to seek a new trial for convicted murderer Wayne Williams. They argued that crucial evidence was withheld from the defense during his trial.
The lawyers--among them Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz and civil rights attorney William F. Kunstler--said that some of the evidence suggested that the Ku Klux Klan may have been involved in the slayings of young blacks in Atlanta in 1979-81.
“We are not saying . . . the Ku Klux Klan committed the murders,” Ron Kuby of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York said. “We’re saying that, had the evidence been made available, it could have been used to rebut the government’s case.”
Williams, now 27, was convicted in February, 1982, of murdering two men who were among the 29 black young adults and children whose killings and disappearances were investigated by a special police task force. He is serving two life sentences.
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