The Smuggler is Black-The Cargo Brown

In Houston Texas a black man fights for his life in federal court.
It seems that Tyrone Williams was smuggling 55 latino
immigrants into the country by way of refrigerated
tractor-trailer truck. 19 of those immigrants died of
suffocation. Should Williams receive the death penalty
or life in prison? Read the article below and offer your
comments.


IN his opening statement, the attorney for truck driver Tyrone Williams conceded a central point. Yes, the lawyer declared, Williams was "clearly guilty" of hauling illegal immigrants in a sealed trailer — a tortuous, four-hour passage up the Rio Grande Valley that 19 of them did not survive.It was also true, added Craig Washington, that once his client discovered all those "poor people" piled in stacks, he hastily unhooked his trailer and high-tailed it for Houston, concocting an alibi on the fly:

"He doesn't get any merit badges for that," the attorney allowed.As these concessions made clear, the United States vs. Tyrone Mapletoft Williams would not be a search to determine who was behind the wheel one steamy May night in 2003, or whether the trucker was in league with smugglers.Rather, the trial would turn on intent, on what Williams knew, or should have known, was unfolding in the back of his 18-wheeler as he rolled up U.S. Highway 77 — windows down, music on the CD player, a young woman at his side.

Seeking the death penalty, the prosecution painted Williams as a "vile and heartless truck driver" who ignored pounding and pleas from inside his trailer. In the defense telling, the truck driver was a poorly used tool of smugglers, who distracted him as they overloaded his trailer at a field outside the border town of Harlingen, Texas, and then, once the rig was underway, tripled the length of the journey.The trial opened on a Monday in late October 2006, in the 11th-floor courtroom of U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal. It was not completed until mid-January, in part because of holiday breaks, in part because of illness, and in part because of the nature of the contested ground.

This was a courtroom struggle fought on the margins of the story line, with protracted wrangling, for example, over nuances such as whether Williams' passenger in the truck cab, a drug courier named Fatima Holloway, had heard a "bumping" or a "banging" coming from the trailer."Am I correct, Ms. Holloway," Washington asked during cross-examination, "that the description you gave to the noise here in your testimony … you described it as a 'banging' noise, did you not?""Yes, I did.""OK. And my question is: Did you describe it on May 24th of 2003" — in a debriefing by investigators — "as being a 'bumping' noise?"
"I may have. I don't remember."
"Is there a distinction in your mind between 'bumping' and 'banging'?"
"Yes."
"Which is louder?"
"Banging."
So it went, witness after witness, with the lawyers lingering over points that, though strategically pivotal, could seem almost picayune given the grotesque dimensions of the tragedy: Exactly how many illegal immigrants boarded? Who closed the trailer doors? What was the greater cause of death: a lack of oxygen or excessive heat?




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