Lewis Williams was executed by the State of Ohio for the murder of Leoma Chmielewski
According to court documents Lewis Williams would enter the home of seventy six year old Leoma Chmielewski and would proceed to beat the woman before shooting her in the head. Williams would ransack the home before fleeing
Lewis Williams was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Lewis Williams was executed by lethal injection on January 14 2004
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When Was Lewis Williams Executed
Lewis Williams was executed on January 14 2004
Lewis Williams Case
A convicted killer struggled with guards and shouted for God’s help Wednesday before the state executed him for the death of a woman during a robbery. The execution team had to forcibly lift Lewis Williams from his knees and pry his hand off the edge of a table next door to the death chamber. It was the first time in nine executions since the state resumed the practice in 1999 that an inmate has struggled with guards. Williams was the first Ohio inmate executed after a claim of mental retardation was rejected.
The execution process, the first that allowed witnesses to see the shunts placed in a condemned inmates’ arms, left witnesses shaken. “It was an awful thing to watch,” said Stephen Ferrell, an assistant state public defender. Reginald Wilkinson, Ohio’s prisons director, called it disturbing and traumatic.
Williams’ peaceful mood while reading the Bible and talking with his lawyer in the hours before his death disappeared when the execution process began at 9:51 a.m. Williams, 45, professed his innocence even as he was carried into the death chamber by four guards. “I’m not guilty. I’m not guilty. God, please help me,” Williams said as he was strapped to the execution table. The diminutive Williams was 5 foot 3 inches tall and weighed 117 pounds, according to prison officials. Williams continued to cry out as his mother, Bonnie Williams, 66, of Columbus, sobbed in a room separated by windows from the death chamber. He kept pleading even in his final official statement, given at 10:07 a.m. “God, please help me. God, please hear my cry,” Williams said. Williams’ yells continued after warden James Haviland pulled the microphone away. Williams continued yelling until 10:08 a.m. when he abruptly stopped speaking. His chest rose and fell a couple times. He was declared dead at 10:15 a.m., executed for shooting Leoma Chmielewski, 76, in the face during a robbery in her Cleveland home in 1983.
Williams also professed his innocence in a death row interview with The Associated Press last month. Williams said he was in Chmielewski’s house the night she died but said he left before she was killed. He disputed evidence presented against him, including a footprint on the victim’s nightgown that matched his shoe and evidence of gun residue on a jacket found at his mother’s house the day he was arrested.
The decision by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to allow the process to be viewed settles a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in September, Wilkinson said. Officials will review what happened with Williams, Wilkinson said. “It was probably as traumatic as anything our staff has gone through,” he said. He said he doesn’t like broadcasting the preparation. “Whether his resistance was genuine or not, it creates an opportunity to do things differently than was done before,” Wilkinson said.
It took several members of the execution team to carry a struggling Williams into the preparation room, as seen on two monitors in the witness room next to the death chamber. At least nine guards had to restrain Williams at various points as they prepared his arms and inserted needles. Williams repeatedly shook his head and tried to lift himself off the preparation bed. He yelled several times, then would rest his head and speak quietly, appearing to whisper at points and chant at other points. One guard standing at his head alternately restrained him and patted his right shoulder to comfort him.
In 1999, a problem inserting an injection needle into Wilford Berry’s right arm delayed Ohio’s first execution since 1963 for more than 20 minutes. Williams tried unsuccessfully to challenge the constitutionality of how inmates are executed in Ohio. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected his request to stay his execution.
Williams was scheduled to be executed in June, but it was delayed after Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Janet Burnside allowed him to present his claim that he was mentally retarded. The U.S. Supreme Court two years ago ruled that executing the mentally retarded was unconstitutional. Burnside later rejected Williams’ mental retardation claim after an expert hired by his attorneys determined he is not mentally retarded.