In Memoriam: Dennis Williams
Dennis
Williams was freed from his wrongful imprisonment on Illinois’
death row in 1996. In March of 2003, not even 6 years after his exoneration,
he died of a brain aneurysm. His story follows.
Dennis Williams spent 18 years in jail, 14 of them on death row, for
a crime he did not commit. He spent more time on death row than any
other inmate in the United States to walk out of death row alive.
Dennis was born in the Mississippi delta. His family moved to Ford
Heights, Chicago when he was young. At the time of his arrest, he
had graduated high school and was planning a career in auto mechanics.
In 1978, Dennis was tried and convicted for the double murder of Lawrence
Lionberg and Carol Schmal and the rape of Carol Schmal. After the
police received an anonymous telephone tip, Dennis was arrested along
with his friend Verneal Jimerson. Dennis said that the day of his
arrest was unforgettable. One of the officers told him, “you're
gonna fry.” Dennis and Verneal, along with their two friends
Kenny Adams and Willie Rainge, were charged with the crime after Kenny’s
girlfriend, Paula Gray, was coerced by the police to be an eyewitness.
Paula is mentally retarded, and the police threatened her with prison
if she did not testify against them. They were four young black men,
and the victims were white. The media dubbed them the “Ford Heights
Four.”
Paula recanted her testimony, and the charges against Verneal were
dropped. Kenny, Willie and Dennis were convicted by an all-white Cook
County jury on the testimony of a man who claimed to have seen them
at the murder scene around the time of the crime. Dennis was sentenced
to death, and Kenny and Willie to long prison terms. Paula was also
convicted and sentenced to prison for both murder (as an accomplice)
and perjury (for recanting her original statement).
Dennis won a new trial due to ineffective assistance of counsel. His
attorney was later disbarred. Prosecutors then agreed to release Paula
from prison if she would revert to her false testimony that she witnessed
the crime. She took the deal. In 1985, based on her testimony, prosecutors
not only retried Dennis, but also renewed the original charges against
Verneal. At the trial, prosecutors also used testimony from a jailhouse
snitch who got favorable treatment for his testimony. Both Dennis
and Verneal were convicted and sentenced to death – the result
of the coercion of one witness, perjury by another who had a financial
incentive to lie, false forensic testimony, and police and prosecutorial
misconduct.
In prison, Dennis was in his cell 23 hours a day. He said that although
he lost all faith in the legal system, he refused to stop fighting
for his freedom. As he put it, “the feeling of sitting on death
row for a crime I did not commit is emotionally choking. It's inhuman.
It's something that shouldn't be imaginable. The very people who are
supposed to uphold the law are the ones who are breaking it.”
In 1996, Northwestern University journalism students working under
Professor David Protess followed up on an article written by Rob Warden
14 years earlier and an 18-year-old police file indicating that four
other suspects might have committed the crime. One of the suspects
was dead, but two others confessed to Protess's students. Those confessions
were corroborated by DNA tests showing that none of the four could
have raped Carol Schmal. Thanks to this evidence, the “Ford Heights
Four” were at last exonerated.
In 1999 Cook County settled lawsuits filed by the Ford Heights Four
for $36 million, the largest civil rights payment in U.S. history.
Dennis said that he would have returned all that money in a second
if he could have had those 18 years of his life back.
When asked if he was angry, Dennis once replied: “If I were to
describe my bitterness or anger, I don't think I could give a description
to it. But it's here. It exists. If I'd depended on the system to
correct itself, I'd have been dead a long time ago. In a way, living
so close to the execution chamber was one of the things that gave
me determination, that gave me strength. I realized I didn't have
to take but a few steps and I'd be behind that door.”
Dennis knew that the one thing that kept him sane was immersing himself
in painting. He was inspired by other death row inmates, especially
Roger Collins and William Bracy. With their help, he taught himself
to paint. Dennis felt that the time he spent painting strengthened
him in an environment designed to numb the senses and destroy even
the tiniest bit of creativity.
His love of painting helped him cope with life after death row. As
he put it: “People always ask me if I’m angry. I just don't
think that anger is the answer. I don't think that anger is going
to get me anywhere. If anything, it's going to hold me back. I can't
think clearly if I'm angry. Instead, I try to focus my energy on creating.
When I am painting, I achieve a kind of relaxation approaching a meditative
state.”
Dennis was even able to combine his love of painting with his passion
for electronics, which he developed before prison. He would make “boomboxes”
out of discarded circuit boards, cardboard and acrylic paint. According
to Dennis, his boomboxes allowed him to “explore the universe
of technology and creativity whose paths are unknown and endless.”
After his release, Dennis worked as a counselor in a youth program
on the west side of Chicago, was a part-time student at Governor’s
State University, and campaigned for criminal justice reform. But
he said that he never felt completely free. He never left his house
without calling someone, so that he “would have an alibi”.
And he always thought about his life on death row. When speaking about
his time on death row, Dennis once said: “I know a lot of guys
who were executed. My neighbor was John Wayne Gacy, though I never
really got to know him. I was good friends with Girvies Davis and
George DelVecchio. Those two were the type of guys that, if you made
friends with them, they were your friends.”
On March 20, 2003, Dennis’ fiancee found him slumped dead in
their home in Flossmoor, Illinois. He was 46 years old. He had been
free from death row for 5 years and 9 months.
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©2003
Illinois Coalition to Abolish The Death Penalty