Wife of truck driver convicted in smuggling case asks jury to spare his life for kids' sake

Monday, January 8th 2007, 7:42 pm

By: News On 6

HOUSTON (AP) _ The wife of a truck driver convicted in the nation's deadliest human smuggling attempt asked a jury Monday to spare her husband the death penalty so his children would not grow up fatherless.

``I grew up without a father. I know what it's like. I don't want my kids to go through that,'' said a tearful Karen Williams, an accountant for the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.

Williams' husband, Tyrone Williams, 35, was convicted last month in the 2003 smuggling attempt that killed 19 illegal immigrants trapped in a sweltering trailer.

The truck driver's oldest son, 11-year-old Tyrone Williams III, testified that his father had stressed the importance of getting an education, and that he missed him.

``He's a very kind man,'' the boy said.

Williams' 8-year-old daughter also briefly testified, saying she wanted her father to come home.

The jury is to begin deliberating Tuesday whether to sentence Williams to death or up to life in prison on charges of conspiracy and harboring and transporting the immigrants.

Later in closing arguments, prosecutors showed photos of the victims, comparing snapshots of their lives with pictures taken after their deaths from dehydration, overheating and suffocation.

Defense attorneys pleaded for leniency, reminding jurors that Williams gave water to the immigrants before abandoning the trailer.

Prosecutors have said Williams deserves a death sentence because he caused the immigrants' deaths by not letting them out.

Craig Washington, Williams' attorney, has said his client never intended for the immigrants to die and blamed the deaths on other members of the smuggling ring who overstuffed the trailer, which was crammed with more than 70 people when it was abandoned at a truck stop near Victoria, about 100 miles southwest of Houston.

Williams, a Jamaican citizen who lived in Schenectady, N.Y., is the only one of 14 people charged facing the death penalty.

In 2005, a jury convicted Williams on 38 transporting counts, but he avoided a death sentence because the jury could not agree on his role in the smuggling attempt. The jury deadlocked on the 20 other counts.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the verdict, saying the jury failed to specify his role in the crime.