Trucker to Be Retried in Smuggling Case

Prosecutors said Monday that they would press ahead with their effort to win the death penalty for a truck driver accused in a botched human-smuggling operation, although they had failed to do so at the driver’s first trial.

The U.S. attorney’s office said federal prosecutors would retry Tyrone Williams, 34, of Schenectady, N.Y., on a smuggling conspiracy charge. If Williams is convicted, he could face the death penalty. The trial is scheduled for December, U.S. Atty. Michael Shelby said in a prepared statement.

A jury delivered a mixed verdict in Williams’ first trial last month. He was convicted of 38 counts of transporting illegal immigrants. However, the jury deadlocked on 20 other counts, including a smuggling conspiracy charge.

After interviewing jurors, U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore said they appeared conflicted on the counts that resulted in the conviction.

Gilmore said the jury had been unable to determine whether Williams was an “aider or abettor” or an instigator of an operation that claimed 19 lives in May 2003. When jurors did not answer questions on a verdict form regarding his potential sentence after the first trial, Gilmore said they had effectively “taken the death penalty off the table.”

Citing a gag order, prosecutors declined to comment further.

Williams’ lawyer, Craig A. Washington, could not be reached.

Officials say Williams, a commercial driver who frequently picked up produce near the U.S.-Mexico border, was paid $7,500 to drive immigrants from the border to Houston.

More than 70 people from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala had crossed the border illegally and were staying at a safe house. They were packed into the back of a tractor-trailer, which was locked and unventilated. Authorities believe that Williams pulled over at a truck stop near Victoria, Texas, then panicked and fled.

Sheriff’s deputies discovered 17 people, including a 5-year-old boy, dead in the back of the truck or on the ground nearby. Two others died a short time later in hospitals.

Of the 14 people indicted in the case, Williams is the only one for whom the government has said it is seeking the death penalty.

Washington has argued that prosecutors have singled out Williams because he is black, a contention that the government has rejected. The government has until June 10 to decide whether to seek the death penalty against three other defendants in the case.