Defendant re-creates belt beating

With a belt in his right hand, the defendant swung down at the desk in the witness stand.

Crack!

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Mellin asked Naeem Williams whether he hit his 5-year-old daughter like that repeatedly.

"Yes, sir," Williams admitted.

Williams, wrapping up his third and final day on the witness stand Thursday, told the jury in U.S. District Court that he hit daughter Talia with a belt or fist almost every day. The belt was among several that investigators had collected from Williams’ military family quarters at Wheeler Army Airfield in 2005.

He also admitted hitting her with his fist so hard that he knocked her unconscious, that he deprived her of food and that he used duct tape to tie her to a bedpost so he could beat her.

"Regardless of everything that had taken place, I loved my daughter," the former Hawaii soldier testified.

Williams, 34, is being tried on a charge of capital murder for his daughter’s July 16, 2005, beating death. If convicted, he would face the death penalty for killing a child through abuse or as part of a practice and pattern of assault and torture.

Under cross-examination, Williams insisted that he delivered the final blow to his daughter’s back. Without explaining how it happened, Williams said the girl fell and hit the back of her head on the ground.

The government had earlier presented evidence that Williams’ daughter had a bruise on the back of her scalp and fresh blood in the back of her skull from an impact on a flat surface. The government told the jury in opening statements that the girl fell backward from a blow to her chest that also dislocated her left shoulder.

Williams said he punched his daughter in the chest hours before the final blow to her back for getting toothpaste all over the bathroom sink while brushing her teeth.

Also under cross-examination, Williams stood up to demonstrate to the jurors how hard he hit the girl with the belt.

Mellin asked for the demonstration because every time he asked Williams whether he hit his daughter with "full force," Williams responded, "I hit her hard, sir."

Mellin also asked Williams to demonstrate for the jurors how loudly he yelled at his daughter while beating her. He said he couldn’t.

"It’s different because this isn’t my house," he said. "This isn’t where I was living. You had to be there."

Neighbors had earlier testified that Williams yelled so loudly that they could clearly hear what he was saying and that he was berating someone.

As part of pretrial plea negotiations, defense lawyers allowed government lawyers to interview Williams in January 2012. Because there was no plea agreement, prosecutors are not allowed to use information from the interview or tell the jurors what Williams said in 2012 except if Williams says something on the witness stand that differs from what he said in 2012.