The jury ended deliberations deadlocked and rejected a sentence of death for Naeem Williams in the torture and beating death of his 5-year-old daughter, but the child’s mother said she still feels closure after waiting nine years for justice.
"It’s going to be a long, hard journey of healing, and I’ll never forget what happened to her and she will always live in my heart, no matter what," Tarshia Williams said following the reading of the jury’s verdict Friday.
Former Schofield Barracks soldier Naeem Williams will not face execution for killing his daughter, Talia, here in 2005.
After seven days of deliberation, the U.S. District Court jurors charged with deciding his fate could not agree on life or death, which means Williams will get sentenced in October to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Death required jurors to return a unanimous vote. Their vote was 8-4 in favor of death.
Williams, 34, showed no reaction when he heard the verdict.
"I’m sure he was relieved," said defense lawyer John Philipsborn. "I think I was actually more relieved than he was at that time."
Because of the length of the deliberations, Philipsborn said, defense attorneys were expecting death.
Philipsborn said Williams had no expectations of an outcome of the trial, but he believes the prospect of being put to death weighed heavily on him.
"When looking back at what happened to his daughter, he was really, really mystified by his own conduct," Philipsborn said.
That conduct included beating the girl almost daily with a belt or his fist, sometimes knocking her out, beating her after binding her head to toe with duct tape to a bedpost, depriving her of food, forcing her to sleep in a barren room on a bare concrete floor, forcing her to perform physically demanding exercises and beating her when she was too exhausted to continue.
Tarshia Williams said she feels saddened and hurt over everything that happened to her daughter.
She contends Army officials could have done more to help the girl and has a pending lawsuit against the U.S. government.
She has asked the government not to ask for restitution from Naeem Williams or his wife, Delilah. Her lawyer, Mark Davis, said that’s because Tarshia Williams wants nothing to do with either of them.
OUTCOME WELCOME
"This was a very satisfying result in the case," U.S. Department of Justice criminal lawyer Steven Mellin said. "Naeem Williams was found guilty and held responsible for what he did on July 16, and that’s very important."
The jury had earlier found Williams guilty of capital murder for killing his daughter in their Wheeler Army Airfield quarters through child abuse and guilty of a second capital murder charge for killing the girl after torturing her for months.
Local federal prosecutor Darren Ching said, "I think now Talia can rest in peace. It’s been a long process. It’s been many years and justice has been served."
Mellin and Ching are the two government lawyers who tried the case.
U.S. Attorney Florence Nakakuni said she is satisfied with the verdict and believes justice was served.
"It’s a split verdict, but that means life without release for Mr. Williams and I think that is the appropriate sentence," she said.
JURY DELIBERATIONS
One juror said the deliberations lasted seven days because of the number of mitigating factors they had to consider before weighing them against the aggravating factors in favor of a death sentence.
"There were more than 150 of them," said a juror who declined to identify himself other than as juror No. 2. "It took time to get through all those items."
The government asked the jurors to consider seven aggravating factors in addition to the two that jurors determined had already been proved during the eligibility phase of the trial.
Defense lawyers asked them to consider 149 factors that would weigh in favor of a life prison term — including Williams’ childhood, alcohol abuse, military service, intellectual disability, relationships with other family members, good behavior in custody and his acceptance of responsibility.
In addition, the jurors added seven factors of their own:
» Whether Williams’ stepfather was a primary influence on Williams’ use of corporal punishment.
» Whether Williams had received salvation.
» Whether he apologized to his family and children.
» Whether he asked forgiveness from Talia Williams.
» Whether he apologized to Tarshia Williams.
» Whether Williams and his wife had conflicts over finances.
» Whether Williams lacked the support system he previously had before marrying Delilah Williams and moving to Hawaii.
FAILED NEGOTIATIONS
Williams was an infantryman assigned to Schofield Barracks when Army officials arrested and charged him with murder one day after the July 16, 2005, killing of his daughter. He could have been tried in military court, where he could have also faced the death penalty.
Federal prosecutors took the case in 2006 in order to try both him and Delilah Williams — who was not a member of the military — together in civilian court.
Philipsborn said the case took years to go before a jury because he tried to resolve it without a trial. He said the defense team asked the government to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for a guilty plea but that the government rejected the offers.
"We made several overtures and repeated the overtures up to trial," he said. "And basically we were told that the decision rested with the very highest echelons of the Department of Justice."
Williams answered questions from government lawyers and investigators over two days in January 2012 in the hope of reaching a plea agreement.
"We wanted to show that we were operating in good faith, the client was operating in good faith by indicating he was going to be forthcoming about what occurred and about his views about what occurred," Philipsborn said.
The effort did not result in a plea deal, and, according to its conditional agreement, the government did not use any of Williams’ statements from those two days against him in trial.
Williams is the first person to stand trial for a capital offense in Hawaii since the territorial Legislature abolished the death penalty in 1957. Hawaii still doesn’t have capital punishment under state law, but it exists under federal law.
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Star-Advertiser report Susan Essoyan and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
