Killer’s Lawyers Say Evidence Was Withheld in 1982 Trial
Lawyers for convicted killer Wayne Williams filed court papers Friday alleging that police and prosecutors withheld key evidence from the defense.
Williams is serving a life sentence for killing two people and is blamed for the deaths of 22 others, most of them children. He has long claimed prosecutors were guilty of misconduct and that his attorneys failed to effectively represent him during his 1982 trial.
In the petition filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Williams’ lawyers allege that authorities withheld from the defense evidence suggesting that the Ku Klux Klan was responsible for the slayings.
It also alleges the probe was abruptly derailed when a Georgia Bureau of Investigation officer tipped off the Klan suspects as to the identity of an informant, and that the officer later destroyed much of the evidence of the Klan investigation.
Williams was convicted of killing Nathaniel Cater, 27, and Jimmy Ray Payne, 21.
They were among 29 young blacks, mostly children, slain between 1979 and 1981 in the Atlanta area.
The state Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1984 and rejected an appeal for a new trial last year.
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