Terry Williams: A victim might be executed

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 11:00:00 +0000

At a time when two of Pennsylvania’s largest institutions have been exposed for turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse of children, the state is preparing to execute a victim of child sex abuse for killing his abusers.

In 1984, less than four months after his 18th birthday — the minimum age required for capital punishment — Terrance “Terry” Williams was sentenced to death for the murder of 56-year-old Amos Norwood, a Philadelphia church leader. With the help of 18-year-old Marc Draper, the son of a police officer, Williams smashed Norwood’s skull with a tire iron, set fire to his body and dumped him in a cemetery. Just five months earlier, Williams was convicted of third-degree murder for killing 50-year-old Herbert Hamilton, who was found naked on his kitchen floor with a knife in his throat.

But according to Williams’ lawyers, both the jury and defense were deliberately kept in the dark about the true motive behind the killings -- the sexual abuse Williams, now 46, endured at the hands of Hamilton and Norwood. At the time, Williams now says, he was too ashamed to admit the abuse. Now he says he was violently raped by Norwood the night before the murder. Five of the jurors that sentenced Williams to death have testified that they never would have done so had they known about Williams’ history of childhood sexual abuse -- and had they known that his victims were also his abusers.

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Terry Williams: A victim might be executed