A jury that decided a former Schofield Barracks soldier is eligible to be put to death must now decide whether his life deserves to be taken.
Federal jurors weighing the fate of Naeem J. Williams found Friday that he is eligible for the death penalty for killing his 5-year-old daughter, Talia.
The verdict moves the trial to its final phase: sentencing, which begins Wednesday.
It is the first death penalty case in state history.
Capital punishment was abolished by Hawaii’s territorial government in 1957, before Hawaii became a state. But Williams was tried in the federal system because the crime occurred on military property, and therefore the death penalty is an option.
Lawyers for both the prosecution and defense declined comment Friday after the jury’s decision.
The jurors deliberated just one day, slightly shorter than the amount of time it took them to find Williams, 34, guilty last month of two counts of first-degree murder — one for killing his daughter through child abuse and one for killing her after months of assault and torture.
The child was killed July 16, 2005, in the family’s quarters at Wheeler Army Airfield.
After the jury rendered its verdict, the court polled each member individually to confirm the decision.
The juror in the first chair hesitated and sounded as though she was choking back tears before answering "yes."
Defense lawyer Michael Burt asked U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright to note on the record the juror’s hesitation.
Seabright acknowledged that the juror cried.
To find Williams eligible to be put to death, jurors had to conclude that Williams acted with intent and that there was at least one aggravating factor.
Prosecutors argued that Williams intended to and did inflict serious physical pain and abuse on his daughter and that the crimes were made worse because of the cruel and heinous manner in which they were carried out. They also argued that the killing was made worse because the girl was particularly vulnerable due to her young age.
Talia Williams was 4 years old when she arrived in Hawaii to live with her father and stepmother, Delilah, in December 2004. By the time she died seven months later, she had experienced food deprivation and almost daily beatings — first with a plastic ruler, then a belt at the hands of her father and stepmother. The beatings continued with her father using his fists.
Delilah Williams testified she also stomped on the child and lifted her up by the hair, sometimes pulling out clumps of it.
Both parents also admitted shoving the girl’s head into the wall and floor and binding her to a bedpost with duct tape to prevent her from moving around as she was being beaten.
In the sentencing phase the jurors will be asked to make a finding of any aggravating and mitigating factors, then to weigh them to determine whether Williams deserves a sentence of death.
For the jurors to find the existence of an aggravating factor, they need to do so unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt. The factors can include, as federal prosecutors have already argued, the heinous, cruel or depraved manner in which the crime was committed and the vulnerability of the victim.
It takes only one juror to make a finding of a mitigating factor, and the standard of proof is by a preponderance of the information, lower than beyond a reasonable doubt. Defense lawyers had previously presented the government a list of 150 mitigating factors they planned to introduce in the sentencing phase.
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WEIGHING FATE
What the jury does in the sentencing phase:
>> Jurors must find any aggravating and mitigating factors, then weigh them to determine whether a death sentence is warranted.
>> The jurors’ finding must be unanimous and beyond a reasonable doubt.
>> It takes only one juror to find a mitigating factor that could affect the sentence’s severity.
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Mitigating factors the jury can consider include whether Williams has no prior criminal record; whether his mental capacity to understand his actions and to follow the law was impaired; and whether another defendant, equally culpable, is not getting the death sentence.
In the eligibility phase of the trial, defense lawyers presented testimony from mental health experts who said that Williams’s IQ test scores fall within the range of intellectual disability, formerly known as mental retardation. In the guilt phase, the jurors heard Delilah Williams admit to beating and stomping on the girl; as part of her plea deal with the government, she is getting a 20-year prison term.
Mitigators can also include factors in Williams’ background, record or character, or any other circumstance of his crime that weighs against imposing the death penalty.
Defense lawyers have lined up relatives, friends and even an old girlfriend of Williams to testify in the sentencing phase.
