U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright told admitted child killer Delilah Williams at her sentencing Tuesday that the most apt description for what she did to her 5-year-old stepdaughter Talia is "evil."
Seabright sentenced Williams to the 20-year prison term the government had promised in exchange for her guilty plea and testimony against her husband, former Schofield Barracks soldier Naeem Williams.
Delilah Williams, 30, has already served nearly half of her sentence because she has been in custody since July 2005, when the girl died from child abuse.
Her lawyer Alexander Silvert told Seabright, "Yes, it sounds like 20 years is not enough, in hindsight." But, he said, the government would not have known what went on in the Williams household had it not offered Delilah a deal for her testimony.
Federal prosecutor Darren Ching added, "Nobody would have known about the house of horrors," the nearly daily beatings, food deprivation, home confinement, duct-taping and stomping.
Seabright agreed but said, "In hindsight a 20-year sentence is difficult to swallow."
He told Williams that her admissions about how she beat and tortured her stepdaughter gave the impression "that you wanted Talia to suffer, that in the end you were OK with her dying."
Seabright told her that her calm, matter-of-fact descriptions of what she did also gave the impression that the torture she and her husband inflicted on the girl "provided you some sort of satisfaction" and "that you enjoyed those beatings."
He described as "shocking, horrific, unbelievable and inhumane" her testimony about the day she stomped on her stepdaughter until the girl defecated on herself and she heard or felt a bone crack under her foot, then put the girl on the toilet and pushed so hard the toilet broke. She said she then lifted up her stepdaughter by the hair and slammed the girl’s head into the wall.
Seabright told Delilah Williams the most chilling part of that testimony was when she said after all of that, she left the girl at home by herself and went to have her nails done, "as if you deserved a special treat" for what she had done.
Williams chose not to speak at her sentencing.
Seabright also said he was disappointed with comments made by U.S. Attorney in Hawaii Florence Nakakuni and U.S. Department of Justice criminal lawyer Steven Mellin.
After the jury in the Naeem Williams trial spared him from the death penalty, Nakakuni said the resulting life prison term for Williams was appropriate. Mellin, who along with Ching prosecuted the case, said he felt he wasted six months of his life.
Seabright said the government will have to answer why, then, it went through the process of a more than three-month-long death penalty trial. Defense lawyers said offers to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence were repeatedly rebuffed. It cost more than $4.3 million to defend Naeem Williams and another $208,518 in jury expenditures.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Elliot Enoki said the government accepts and respects the jury’s verdict that life in prison is an appropriate penalty and that at no time did the government feel the prosecution of Delilah and Naeem Williams was a waste of time.
