Killer of farmer in 1992 says he’s sorry, asks for clemency
Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/233394/
Frank Williams Jr. had worked on Clyde Spence’s farm in Lafayette County off and on for years, and he had been fired before.
But after Spence fired him on Oct. 7, 1992, for breaking a tractor, Williams shot the 49-yearold farmer to death, something he said he now regrets.
“What really, I think, pissed me off is, he didn’t pay me my wages,” Williams said at a Parole Board hearing Monday. “I had it in my head, I was going to have them one way or another.”
Williams, who is scheduled to die next month for Spence’s murder, spoke to the board at the Varner Supermax Unit near Grady in support of his bid to be granted executive clemency.
His attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Julie Brain, contends that Williams should be spared because he is mentally retarded.
At a separate hearing later Monday in Little Rock, Spence’s sons and a friend told the Parole Board that Williams was mentally capable enough to play running back for his high school football team and to work on Spence’s farm, where Williams was trusted to supervise other employees, operate and fix farm equipment and sell hay and cattle.
“He would figure money and cut hay and sell hay and know at the end of the day what was his money, and what was my dad’s,” said Spence’s son, Paul, who spoke in favor of the execution along with his brother David.
Spence, a former Army paratrooper, owned 500 head of cattle and grew wheat, alfalfa, hay and soybeans on 3, 000 acres he owned or rented around Bradley in Lafayette County.
Williams, now 42, had worked for Spence since he was a teenager. After Williams went to prison for an aggravated assault conviction, Spence sponsored his release under a program that allowed him to live and work in the community under Spence’s supervision.
Spence’s son, David, said his father did pay Williams for his last day of work. Then he began making calls, trying to find Williams another job.
“If he got in trouble, if he got a speeding ticket or whatever, it was my dad who would get it out for him, go take care of him,” Paul Spence said. “He loved him no different than he did me or my brother.”
The night after he was fired, Williams returned to the farm and knocked on Spence’s door. When Spence answered, Williams shot him in the face with a. 25-caliber pistol.
Williams said he had been drinking and smoking marijuana before the shooting.
“I remember him coming to the door, and it just went blank,” Williams said. “The next thing I know, I’m in jail.”
Sitting between Brain and another assistant federal public defender, his arms and legs shackled, Williams said he wanted to tell Spence’s family that “my sympathies go out with them, and I hope after this day, they can move on.”
Asked by a board member about his history with Spence, he smiled. He said had been fired and had quit before but always came back.
“We both think we have an attitude,” Williams said.
Psychologist Ricardo Weinstein of Encinitas, Calif., who evaluated Williams at the request of Brain, testified that Williams’ IQ of 75 is within the range of “mild mental retardation.”
Williams’ attorneys also presented the board with several letters from advocacy groups for the disabled asking that he be spared from execution.
“We now know that Frank Williams falls squarely within the class of individuals whose execution by the state would offend Arkansas law, United States Supreme Court precedent, and our community understanding of decency,” said one letter, signed by Disability Rights Center Director Nan Ellen East, Partners for Inclusive Communities Director David Deere and Judy Brooks, chairman of the governor’s Developmental Disabilities Council.
Williams’ sentence in February 1993 came a month before then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker signed a law banning death sentences for the retarded. The law includes people with IQs of 65 or below, as well as others who have “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning” that develops at an early age.
In 2002, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that executions of the retarded are barred under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Brain attempted to raise the issue after taking over the case in 2004, but the federal district and appeals courts rejected her petition under a law barring multiple requests for review. The Parole Board will make a recommendation to Gov. Mike Beebe on whether to grant clemency. Beebe has said it’s up to the courts to decide whether a defendant is retarded. Susie Grissom, a juror in Williams’ trial, told the Parole Board she regrets her vote for Williams’ execution. She said she had heard rumors that jurors could face retaliation if they didn’t return a death sentence. “I just didn’t want no trouble,” Grissom said.