Can a person who doesn’t lay a hand on a victim be convicted of an “act of violence”? This week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set an argument date for a Texas appeal that involves that very question. During the week of April 26, the 5th Circuit will hear United States of America v. Tyrone Mapletoft Williams, a case in which a jury sentenced trucker Tryone Williams to life in prison on numerous charges, including conspiracy and alien-smuggling, according to both sides' briefs to the 5th Circuit. In 2004, Williams abandoned numerous illegal aliens who were locked inside his sweltering trailer, and 19 of them died. The jury found that some of Williams’ charges were an “act of violence” under the Federal Death Penalty Act — findings Williams disputes, according to his attorney, Seth Kretzer, a Houston solo. “This is probably the first-ever death penalty prosecution that did not actually involve an act of violence,” Kretzer says. “Our guy just drove a truck. It’s pretty-cutting edge that the death penalty would apply to that.” But the prosecution’s brief disputes that. The first sentence of their brief states: “This criminal appeal arises from a capital case in which Williams’s intentional acts led to the horrific deaths of 19 of the 74 people he illegally transported in his trailer.” According to Renata Gowie, an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Texas: “That kind of sums up our position, yeah.”
-- John Council
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