Dobie Gillis Williams (1961 – January 8, 1999) was an American from Louisiana who was convicted of the murder of Sonja Knippers in 1984, and sentenced to death.
Williams was executed, however, because the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mitigating information was introduced to the jury too late in the case.
[1] She also notes that poor and minority people are disproportionately sentenced to death and executed in the United States criminal justice system.
At the time of the murder, Dobie Gillis Williams was on a five-day furlough from Camp Beauregard, where he had been imprisoned for attempted simple burglary.
Exclusion of people of color from the grand jury violated Louisiana Revised Statute 14:30 as it compromises due process.
The prosecution said that a medical examination revealed scratches and abrasions on Williams' body that were consistent with the type of wounds that an individual might incur by quickly exiting through the Knippers' bathroom window, as they suggested he did.
They said that he told the officers that after the stabbing he jumped out of the bathroom window, dropped the knife in the Knippers' yard, and ran to his grandfather's house, where he hid his shirt underneath the porch.
[1] During the appeals, a defense expert strongly criticized the prosecution's contention that Williams had gotten in and out through the bathroom window, as he would have had great difficulty getting through its 18" width.
But a defense team of forensic DNA analysts criticized the state's set of tests for the following reasons: sloppy technique, poor quality controls, and subjective interpretation.
The 5th Circuit said that mitigating information had been introduced to a jury too late in the process, and upheld his sentence under the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA).
In 2005, Williams was one of the subjects of Sister Prejean's book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.
She noted that the defense had been weak, failing to discuss his low IQ of 65, which is below the range establishing mental retardation (now referred to as intellectual disability).
[2] In her book, Prejean noted that poor people and minorities were sentenced to death at a disproportionately much higher rate than wealthier whites.