Williams Set to Die on Friday

For 17 years, Keith Daniel Williams has waited at San Quentin for his turn to die. Now, at the age of 48, the remorseful triple murderer is about to become the fourth person to be executed in California since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978.

Williams was 31 when he shot and killed two Merced men execution-style in a nonsensical attempt to steal back a bad check he had written. While he was at it, he kidnapped Lourdes Meza, a 25-year-old mother of four, and took her to a secluded hill, where he shot her in the back of the head as he raped her.

With his execution by lethal injection scheduled to begin one minute after midnight on Friday, defense attorneys are working to win a last-minute stay on the grounds that William’s lifelong mental disabilities should preclude him from being put to death. A request for a stay is pending before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

His attorneys also contend that the prosecutor at his original trial and federal prison officials withheld crucial information about his mental condition that would have persuaded his jury to sentence him to life in prison instead of death.

Prosecutors and law enforcement officials, however, argue that Williams has had more than enough time to make his legal case and should be executed on schedule to avenge his three victims.

“This is a man who murdered young people for fun and then celebrated his act,” said Merced County Sheriff Tom Sawyer. “Keith Daniel Williams should have died for his crimes long ago, and if we are to have any conscience and soul as a government, we must satisfy the law by executing him on May 3rd.”

If the execution goes forward as scheduled, Williams would be the second inmate put to death by lethal injection in California. So-called “Freeway Killer” William Bonin was executed in February for the murder of as many as 21 boys and young men.

Williams has been on San Quentin’s death row since April 13, 1979. Of the 440 men and women awaiting execution in California, only five have been on Death Row longer.

Born in Pittsburg, Calif., Williams is the only child of a mother who abused alcohol while pregnant. Apparently suffering from what is now recognized as fetal alcohol syndrome, Williams was sickly and slow to develop as a baby.

As he grew up, according to his attorneys, he was frequently beaten by his stepfather. Before reaching adulthood, he suffered head injuries in three separate accidents, including a motorcycle collision that left him unconscious for days.

He was sent to the California Youth Authority for juvenile offenses, where he was the victim of further abuse, his lawyers say. He spent most of his adult life in federal prison on car theft charges until he was released at the age of 30.

Williams’ attorneys point out that he received medication for his illness while he was imprisoned and responded well, becoming a model prisoner with no serious disciplinary problems. But with his release, his treatment ended, and his mental condition quickly deteriorated.

In October 1978, six months after he got out of prison, Williams and a friend, Robert Tyson, went on a crime rampage in the San Joaquin Valley, stealing a gun, a car and a checkbook, among other items.

In the little town of Galt, Williams met Miguel Vargas and Lourdes Meza at a yard sale, where he arranged to buy their car for $1,500. The next day, he paid for the car with a check from the stolen checkbook.

But Vargas said he would keep the pink slip for the car until the check cleared. That night, before Vargas had a chance to deposit the check, Williams decided to visit him at his Merced home and retrieve it. Williams prepared for the outing by cleaning the stolen .22-caliber pistol.

Williams and Tyson went together to the house where Vargas was staying with his brother Salvador and Meza. Williams threatened to kill the brothers if they did not turn over the check and the pink slip. Then he ordered them to kneel and shot both of them twice in the back of the head.

Leaving the house, Williams and Tyson forced Meza into their car. Tyson drove while Williams raped her in the back seat.

They stopped along the road and Williams took Meza up a grassy hillside. Holding his gun, he raped her again and in the middle of the act shot her several times in the back of the head and neck.

According to Tyson, who later testified against Williams, the killer said he had wanted to experience her “dying twitches.”

A few days after the bodies of the Vargas brothers were found, Tyson turned himself in and led authorities to Meza’s body. Williams was arrested during a routine traffic stop six weeks later.

Williams confessed to the crime and was sentenced to death in 1979. Tyson received three concurrent sentences of 25 years to life in prison.

For the past 17 years, Williams’ case has worked its way through the appellate system, where his attempts to overturn his sentence, win clemency or receive a stay of execution have all been rejected.

The latest flurry of appeals centers on 595 pages of documents released by the federal Bureau of Prisons less than two weeks ago--12 years after they were first requested by appellate defense attorney Richard Mazer.

In the past, prison officials had said the documents sought by the defense--which date from Williams’ imprisonment during the 1970s--did not exist.

Mazer contends the newly discovered records support the defense contention that well before the murders, Williams suffered from a variety of mental problems, including bipolar mood disorder, more commonly known as manic depression.

That information should have been presented to the jury that sentenced him to death, Mazer argues, and might have resulted in a lesser sentence.

One of the documents in the newly released batch of papers indicates that the original prosecution team received documents from the Bureau of Prisons that were not made available to the defense.

The appellate defense team also faults Williams’ original court-appointed defense lawyer for failing to put on any kind of case during sentencing that might have swayed the jury not to vote for capital punishment.

“These new records are stunning in that they give substantial weight to Mr. Williams’ claims concerning his mental and psychiatric problems,” Williams’ attorneys wrote in a brief submitted to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. “The new documents show the Court the true scope of trial counsel’s ineffectiveness.”

The arguments raised in Williams’ case about childhood abuse and his mental disabilities are similar to those raised in the last-minute attempt to save convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris from execution in 1992. The court, however, rejected the argument, and Harris became the first prisoner put to death in California since 1967.

Despite the newly released documents, the California Supreme Court on Friday rejected the defense request for a stay. Similarly, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Coyle refused Monday to grant a stay.

The issue is now pending before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which attempted to halt Harris’ execution at the last minute but was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since then, the court’s rules have been changed, making it harder for appellate judges to stay an execution.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit heard arguments Tuesday afternoon on a request from Williams’ attorney that they overrule Coyle and grant a stay. The defense argued that the case should be sent to a new jury to rehear the question of what Williams’s sentence should be.

“No one should be executed without a jury hearing why the person should live,” said James S. Thomson, an attorney for Williams.