Corey Williams

Overview

Corey Williams spent twenty years in a Louisiana prison for a murder he says he did not commit — but the detail that distinguishes his case from the standard wrongful-conviction story is what the prosecution is alleged to have manufactured. When the MacArthur Justice Center filed its 2018 U.S. Supreme Court petition in Williams v. Louisiana, it did not only accuse Caddo Parish prosecutors of hiding exculpatory evidence. It alleged they had faked “summaries” of witness statements to incriminate a 16-year-old with an IQ of 68 (Equal Justice Initiative). Williams walked free from Angola prison on May 22, 2018 — but only by pleading guilty to lesser charges, a bargain that keeps him off the Death Penalty Information Center’s Innocence List to this day (Death Penalty Information Center).

A child shaped by lead

In January of 1998, Corey Williams was an intellectually disabled 16-year-old — three weeks past his 16th birthday — with an IQ of 68 (MacArthur Justice Center). A psychologist who examined him said he suffered “the most extreme case of lead poisoning that I have ever seen” as a child (MacArthur Justice Center). He still sucked his thumb, urinated himself on a regular basis, and ate dirt and paper (Associated Press; Equal Justice Initiative). In his Shreveport community he was known as a “duck” or a “chump” — someone who would take the blame for things he did not do (MacArthur Justice Center).

That vulnerability became the prosecution’s raw material. After 23-year-old pizza deliveryman Jarvis Griffin was shot, killed and robbed in Shreveport in January 1998, police interrogated Williams through the night (Associated Press). They did so knowing he was intellectually disabled — and therefore, as disability experts have long warned, more susceptible to confessing falsely (Death Penalty Information Center). His confession was brief and devoid of corroborating details; having just assumed responsibility for a homicide, the boy told the officers, “I’m tired. I’m ready to go home and lay down” (Associated Press; Equal Justice Initiative).

The evidence pointed elsewhere

No physical evidence linked Williams to the killing (Equal Justice Initiative). Witnesses reported seeing several older men steal money and pizza from Griffin after he was shot (Associated Press). One of those men’s fingerprints were found on the murder weapon; the victim’s blood was found on another man’s clothing; the victim’s money and pizzas turned up in a dumpster near their house (Death Penalty Information Center; Equal Justice Initiative). The only witness who identified Williams as the shooter was Chris Moore — nicknamed “Rapist” — one of the older men himself (Associated Press; Death Penalty Information Center).

More damning still, witnesses told law enforcement on the night of the murder that Williams did not commit the offense, and officers believed the older men had conspired to pin the crime on him (MacArthur Justice Center). Prosecutors hid that evidence (MacArthur Justice Center). The withheld recordings of witness interviews showed police suspected Moore and the two other men were trying to frame Williams (Death Penalty Information Center; Associated Press). And the 2018 cert petition alleged the prosecution had gone further, faking “summaries” of witness statements to incriminate him (Equal Justice Initiative).

The machine that prosecuted him

Caddo Parish prosecutor Hugo Holland aggressively sought the death penalty for Williams (Equal Justice Initiative). Williams was convicted of first-degree murder on October 28, 2000, and sentenced to death (Death Penalty Information Center). Holland, together with his successor Dale Cox, was responsible for 75 percent of all death sentences imposed in Louisiana between 2010 and 2015 (Equal Justice Initiative; Death Penalty Information Center). Holland was later investigated for withholding evidence in a separate case and forced to resign his post over misconduct (Death Penalty Information Center; Equal Justice Initiative).

Williams’ death sentence did not survive. In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that executing people with intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment, and Williams was removed from death row; a district court judge formally overturned his death sentence in 2004 on the basis of his disabilities, and he was resentenced to life imprisonment (Equal Justice Initiative; Essence). Louisiana courts, however, upheld the conviction itself, refusing to weigh his age and disability when evaluating whether his confession was reliable (Equal Justice Initiative). In October 2017 the Louisiana Supreme Court voted 4–2 against even holding a hearing on his claims (Associated Press).

Prosecutors denied they had violated their duty to disclose favorable evidence. Dale Cox, Caddo Parish’s former acting district attorney, wrote in a 2015 court filing that Williams had not proved the recorded witness statements were exculpatory or that withholding them denied him a fair trial, insisting the state had presented “a confession that was wholly corroborated by eyewitness testimony” (Associated Press).

The petition that broke the case

On March 2, 2018, the MacArthur Justice Center — in partnership with the Promise of Justice Initiative — filed a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Caddo Parish prosecutors’ conduct was a blatant violation of Williams’ due-process rights (MacArthur Justice Center). The filing drew an extraordinary show of force from inside the system: 44 former state and federal prosecutors and Justice Department officials, including former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, signed an amicus brief urging the Court to grant Williams a new trial (Associated Press; Death Penalty Information Center).

In response, the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office abandoned its defense of the case (MacArthur Justice Center). DA James Stewart Sr. agreed to Williams’ immediate release, a decision lead counsel Amir Ali praised: Stewart had taken “a hard look at what happened in Corey’s case and agreeing to his release” (Associated Press). State District Judge Katherine Dorroh vacated the murder conviction (Associated Press).

The price of freedom was a guilty plea. On May 21, 2018, Williams pleaded guilty to manslaughter and obstruction of justice — charges he maintains he did not commit — and walked out of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on May 22 (Associated Press; Death Penalty Information Center). A court filing accompanying the plea said prosecutors could have presented evidence that Williams was present for Griffin’s shooting and “aided and abetted” the killing (Associated Press). “Twenty years ago, Corey went outside to hang out with friends,” Ali said. “It has taken him 20 years to make it back home. No one can give Corey that time back” (Associated Press; Essence).

Because the plea stands, the Death Penalty Information Center does not count Williams among the exonerated — he fails its Innocence List criteria despite the evidence of innocence (Death Penalty Information Center). And in the detail that may say the most about who he was when he went in: upon his release, the man convicted of killing a pizza deliveryman asked for pizza (Essence).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not assert Williams’ exact date of birth, which no fully-read source provides. It does not claim Hugo Holland faced formal discipline specifically over the Williams case — the sources establish he was investigated for withholding evidence in a separate case and resigned over misconduct, which is stated as such. It does not present the contents of the allegedly fabricated witness-statement summaries, which were not independently reviewed; the fabrication allegation is attributed to the cert petition as reported by the Equal Justice Initiative. It does not cover Williams’ life after his May 2018 release, for which no verified information was found. And it does not call him exonerated: the guilty plea he took to gain his freedom means the legal record still carries a conviction, a fact the profile states rather than smoothing over.