Ex-lawyer found guilty of killing DA's wife; jury to decide next week on death penalty
Updated: It didn’t take a Texas jury long to find a former justice of the peace guilty of shooting to death the local district attorney’s wife last year.
Within two hours of starting deliberations Thursday, the panel had reached a guilty verdict, although the case against 47-year-old Eric Lyle Williams was circumstantial, the Associated Press and WFAA report.
Further deliberations will begin Monday on whether Williams should get the death penalty.
The defense rested Wednesday without calling any witnesses in the Rockwall County trial, which was moved from Kaufman County at Williams’ request. Williams also faces capital murder charges, but he is being tried separately in the 2013 slayings of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his chief assistant prosecutor, Mark Hasse.
Williams is accused of shooting to death both Cynthia McLelland and the DA in their home outside Dallas over the Easter weekend last year. Hasse was fatally shot several months earlier by a masked gunman outside the Kaufman County courthouse. The alleged motive was revenge: The DA and Hasse prosecuted Williams in 2012 for stealing computer monitors from a government building. Williams lost his job and his law license after his conviction.
As it became apparent that lawyers in the Kaufman County criminal justice system were being targeted for murder last year, it wasn’t just local prosecutors who were horrified and fearful. Initial news reports speculated that there could be a connection between the slaying of the Colorado prisons superintendent and Hasse’s assassination and pointed to a prison gang as a possible culprit before Williams was arrested and charged.
Despite promising an “airtight” case in opening arguments, the government never found the gun they say Williams used to kill the McLellands, KTVT reported.
During closing arguments Thursday, defense attorney Matt Seymour told the jury the prosecution didn’t prove that Williams was at the McLellands’ home, let alone killed them. In addition to the lack of a murder weapon, he also pointed to a lack of DNA, blood evidence and fingerprints, according to KDFW and KXAS.
Witnesses who testified against Williams said he had gotten someone else to rent a storage unit for him and purchased a car under a fake name that was found in the unit. Prosecutor Toby Shook said at closing that evidence also suggested the defendant had gone to the McLellands’ home wearing a sheriff’s badge.
A centerpiece of the prosecution’s case was an anonymous email confession that they say Williams sent to Kaufman County Crime Stoppers. During a search of his home, investigators found a Crime Stoppers tip code corresponding to the email. Shook called Williams’ retention of the code the “dumbest decision in the history of homicides,” KDFW reports..
Earlier Associated Press and Dallas Morning News stories provide further details.
Updated and rewritten at 1:35 p.m. to include news of Williams’ conviction.
