The US is still Executing Teens and Locking Kids Up for Life | War Is ...

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By Dave Lindorff

The United States never misses an opportunity to castigate other countries for ?uncivilized? behavior, and certainly there is enough of that to go around almost anywhere you look in the world. But there?s plenty of it here in the U.S. too.

Just consider the case of Terry Williams.

Williams, a 47-year-old black man, has spent almost 30 years on Pennsylvania?s crowded death row while lawyers sought appealed his death penalty for two murders committed back when he was a 17 and 18-year old boy. Now he?s about to be killed by the state for those crimes.

At the time he was tried and convicted, although it was known to prosecutors that his two victims were adult men who had forcibly raped Williams when he was as young as 13, and that he had been a victim of sexual abuse since he was six, the jury was not informed about any of this. In recent years, a number of the 12 jurors who originally convicted him and sentenced the teenager to death have now said that had they known about the abuse he suffered -- particularly at the hands of the two men he later killed -- they would have decided the case differently, and certainly would not have voted for the death penalty. Even the wife of one of his victims has pleaded with the state to spare him.

Nevertheless, the state?s governor, Tom Corbett, a hard-on-crime Republican who, prior to being elected to the state?s top post, served as attorney general, making him the state?s top lawyer, had no hesitation in signing his death warrant earlier this month, with an Oct. 3 execution date.

The irony is that Pennsylvania has just gone through a huge ugly scandal involving the football program at its largest public university, Pennsylvania State University, where the defensive coach on the school?s nationally recognized football team, Jerry Sandusky, was found to have been raping dozens of young boys over a period of some 20 years, at least part of that time with the knowledge of the school?s athletic director and top school officials, who acted to cover up his crimes. Sandusky was tried and found guilty of multiple rapes, and could be sentenced to life in prison.

There are credible allegations that Corbett, as attorney general, ignored charges and evidence forwarded to his office that Sandusky was raping and molesting young boys at Penn State...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to:?www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1344

Source: http://warisacrime.org/content/us-still-executing-teens-and-locking-kids-life

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