A federal jury decided last year that Gary "Fat Boy" Williams Jr. was a drug dealer. But when his sentencing hearing resumes today in a Baltimore courtroom, he will face accusations that he was involved in the shooting death of an informant though he has never been charged with murder.
Federal prosecutors are mounting what is essentially a trial within a trial in hopes of winning a stiffer sentence. Federal sentencing law allows a judge to consider alleged crimes that have been refuted at trial or which a defendant has never been charged with, a provision that critics say flouts the constitutional protections of the trial-by-jury system.
"It's a practice that is obviously ripe for abuse," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. "The prosecutors can use this technique to punish someone for a murder that they're not willing to formally charge and prosecute, and the result is that the defendant receives the penalty but none of the due process protections."
FOR THE RECORD - An article in the Maryland section of Friday's editions of The Sun about the sentencing of a Harford County man on drug charges misspelled the first name of the defense attorney.
The attorney's name is Christie Needleman
The Sun regrets the error.
Williams' lawyer, Christine Needleman, said, "It's supposed to be a sentencing for my client's first [federal] drug conviction. ... Instead, they're trying to tack on a murder that can't be proven to send him to prison for life without parole, without any of the procedures."
Rod J. Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, said Williams is accused of ordering the killing of a 35-year-old Harford County woman in February 2006 to obstruct the drug investigation, making it "relevant conduct" to the drug dealing. Prosecutors must prove his involvement by only a "preponderance of evidence."
In a criminal trial, a defendant must be proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt," a higher threshold.
Sentencing guidelines call for Williams, 28, of Abingdon, to receive 14 to 17 years on the drug charges, but the murder accusations could stretch it to life.
"The issue today is that he has been convicted, and we have an obligation to bring to the judge's attention all the relevant conduct," Rosenstein said. "You don't want a judge to flip a coin. You want a defendant who murdered a witness getting a sentence in the high end."
In 2005, an Arkansas man charged with killing a 13-year-old boy, his mother and the mother's boyfriend in a six-hour rampage pleaded guilty to two lesser counts of drug-related charges, and the murder charges were dismissed. But during sentencing, they were brought forward as relevant conduct, and he received life in prison.
