Joseph Nichols and Willie Williams were executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Claude Shaffer
According to court documents Joseph Nichols and Willie Williams would enter a deli with the intention to rob it and would shoot and kill seventy year old clerk Claude Shaffer, Jr.
Joseph Nichols and Willie Williams would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Joseph Nichols would be executed on March 7 2007
Willie Williams would be executed on January 31 1995
Joseph Nichols Photos
Joseph Nichols FAQ
When Was Joseph Nichols Executed
Joseph Nichols was executed on March 7 2007
When Was Willie Williams Executed
Willie Williams was executed on January 31 1995
Joseph Nichols Case
More than 26 years after he and a friend robbed a Houston convenience store where a clerk was fatally shot, Joseph Nichols wound up in the same death house where a dozen years earlier his partner was executed for the same crime. The similarities between Nichols and his longtime friend, Willie Ray Williams, ended in their final moments. Williams in 1995 spoke of “love and peace of Islam” as he was executed.
Nichols, 45, described by Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials as uncooperative throughout the day, had to be carried to the death chamber, then used his final statement while strapped to the gurney Wednesday evening for a profanity-filled diatribe against a supervisory corrections officer. “That’s all I got to say,” he barked. He winked toward a window where his parents and three brothers watched. He was pronounced dead seven minutes later.
The lethal injection was the second carried out in Texas in as many days and the eighth this year in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Nichols and Williams were both convicted and condemned for the Oct. 13, 1980, slaying of Claude Shaffer.
“We’re feeding and clothing him all these years and his family has had all these extra years with him,” Claudette Shaffer, the daughter of the shooting victim, said after watching Nichols die. “They had a chance to say goodbye. We’ve never had that chance. Something is askew.” Nichols’ vulgar final statement, she said, “just reaffirmed the image I had of him: No feeling, no remorse, no concern for anyone.”
She said she was eager to tell her 90-year-old mother, who couldn’t attend the execution because of health concerns, of Nichols’ death. “She is going to be very happy,” Shaffer said. “She’s been waiting since 1982.”
Nichols’ execution came despite appeals and protests from death penalty opponents that focused on the fact one bullet wound killed Shaffer, 64, and that Williams was prosecuted and convicted of being the shooter. Nichols, who said he’d fled the store when the fatal shot was fired, also was labeled as the shooter by Harris County district attorneys who prosecuted the case.
Prosecutors defended Nichols’ conviction, saying Texas’ law of parties makes non-triggermen just as culpable in crimes like Shaffer’s murder. Nichols’ lawyer, J. Clifford Gunter III, took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which previously had rejected Nichols’ appeals. Gunter argued Nichols had been deprived “of a complete and meaningful post-conviction review of his case.”
Less than two hours before Nichols was to die, the high court turned down his appeal. “There’s nothing else we can do,” Gunter said. “It’s a sad day.”
Nichols was tried twice. At the first trial, jurors were unable to agree on the death penalty and a mistrial was declared. It’s the second trial that Nichols’ lawyers accused prosecutors of changing tactics, suppressing evidence and arguing he was the shooter so jurors would be more inclined to decide on a death sentence, which they did.
“They had a parties charge (to the jury),” said Roe Wilson, who handles capital case appeals for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, denying any improper manipulations of evidence. “They were told the prosecution thought Nichols was the shooter, but there was no ballistics evidence. “And even if Nichols wasn’t actually the one who hit him, under the law of parties Nichols was still guilty.” The fatal bullet could not be recovered for ballistics tests.
“I never denied being there,” Nichols said recently from death row, his home since he was 20. “I’m not telling you I’m not guilty of anything.” But he insisted that when Williams fired the fatal shot, “I had already left.” In the robbery, Williams “got some change,” he said. “I got nothing.”
Three more Texas inmates have execution dates this month. Next is Charles Nealy, 42, set to die March 20 for the 1997 slaying of Dallas convenience store clerk Jiten Bhakta, 25. A second store employee also was killed in the robbery.