A truck driver was found guilty of all charges on Monday and faces possible execution in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants who suffocated in his airless trailer in 2003.
In a retrial of the nation's deadliest human trafficking case, the federal jury that convicted Tyrone Williams, 35, of Schenectady, New York, begins hearing testimony today on whether to give Williams the first death sentence under a 12 year-old "alien smuggling" statute or a lesser term of up to life in prison.
The milk trailer, piled with bodies and 55 survivors, was found abandoned at a truck stop near Victoria, Texas, in the early hours of May 14, 2003.
Williams, an immigrant from Jamaica, sat impassively through 58 recitations of "guilty" as the verdict form was read, then embraced his lawyer, Craig Washington. Asked afterward how his client had taken the news, Washington, a former Texas congressman, said, "Better than me."
Washington, whose trial defense conceded Williams' role as a smuggler but challenged his awareness of the victims' suffering, said he planned to put on about 20 witnesses to testify about mitigating factors in Williams' history.
The lead prosecutor, Daniel Rodriguez, an assistant US attorney, who had painted Williams as "vile and heartless," declined to comment until the punishment phase was concluded.
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