Woman’s Death Penalty Trial Underway

In a rare death penalty case involving a woman, a prosecutor Wednesday began presenting evidence he said will prove Antoinette Yancey carried out the “execution” of a witness to a fatal computer store robbery masterminded by Yancey’s boyfriend.

But Yancey, 28, of Los Angeles, contends she was duped by her boyfriend and had no idea she was helping set up a 1994 meeting in which the witness was killed, her lawyer also told an Orange County Superior Court jury during opening statements this week.

Prosecutors allege the witness, 22-year-old Ardell Williams of Gardena, was killed for providing damaging testimony before the Orange County Grand Jury that helped lead to indictments against the boyfriend, William Clinton Clark, and others in the fatal 1991 robbery of a Fountain Valley CompUSA store.

During that robbery, Kathy Lee, a 49-year-old Garden Grove secretary, was shot in the head when she arrived to pick up her son from work.

Clark, 42 of Los Angeles, was convicted of double first-degree murder in May for his role in the slayings, but the Orange County jury was unable to decide if he should be executed. He is awaiting a new penalty phase trial.

If Yancey is convicted, jurors would return for a second trial phase to decide if she should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole.

Yancey is only the third woman in Orange County to face a possible death sentence since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977.

Only 4% of murder suspects arrested in Orange County in 1994 were women, said Assistant District Atty. John D. Conley, citing state crime figures. About half of all murders include special circumstances, such as when the killings occur during certain crimes, that can lead to execution.

Yancey’s case is unusual for another reason: The trials for her and Clark are the first in recent Orange County history involving defendants charged with killing a witness to a crime, a potential capital offense.

In his opening statements to the jury last week, Deputy Dist. Atty. Rick King said Clark, plotting from his Orange County jail cell, recruited Yancey to befriend the witness and her family, using an assumed name, and carry out the execution-style shooting of Williams.

The victim had previously testified she accompanied Clark while he cased the Fountain Valley computer store about a month before the robbery. She also told authorities that Clark’s younger brother, one of two other men also convicted in the computer store slaying, admitted the robbery had ended in murder.

Yancey allegedly lured Williams to a Gardena industrial park on the promise of a job interview, and shot her in the back of the head as she filled in an employment application. About two hours later on the morning of March 13, 1994, Yancey visited Clark in jail, the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney Gary Proctor said Yancey was duped into believing she was befriending Williams’ family to arrange a meeting between Ardell Williams and an investigator Clark said was working on his court case.

The defense attorney told jurors there is nothing linking Yancey to the crime scene, and that evidence suggests the killer was left-handed and strong, rather than a right-handed woman such as Yancey.