KAUFMAN COUNTY, Texas — A judge has granted an application for bench warrant and transport order for Eric Williams, the former Kaufman County justice of the peace convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, to obtain court-funded medical testing to be used during a hearing on Williams’ motion for a new trial.
KAUFMAN COUNTY, Texas — A judge has granted an application for bench warrant and transport order for Eric Williams, the former Kaufman County justice of the peace convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, to obtain court-funded medical testing to be used during a hearing on Williams’ motion for a new trial.
The transport order and bench warrant were granted on December 30, 2014, just minutes after Williams’ estranged wife and accomplice, Kim Williams, entered a plea of guilty in the murder of Kaufman County prosecutor Mark Hasse and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Williams was convicted of capital murder in the death of Cynthia McLelland, the wife of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland, who were killed in their Forney, Texas, area home over Easter weekend 2013. Hasse was gunned down by Williams as he walked from the Kaufman County Courthouse annex parking lot to the courthouse on January 31, 2013.
Williams is now seeking a new trial on the grounds the presiding judge refused to continue the trail in the punishment phase to allow Williams and his defense team time to perform brain scans and gather expert testimony which, he argues, will reveal brain damage that ultimately altered his judgement and decision making abilities.
“The results of the medical testing are expected to support Mr. Williams’ contention, to be made at a motion for new trial, that his mitigation case for a life sentence, rather than a death sentence, was severely prejudiced by the refusal of the trial judge to continue the trial of the punishment phase of the case to permit his counsel time to develop the argument that his judgement and decision making abilities were substantially impaired by damage to his brain, likely caused by uncontrolled Type 1 diabetes and related fainting and falling episodes,” states the application.
Williams “would have offered the results of the brain scans and related expert testimony as a part of his mitigation case, and to rebut the state’s argument that he constitutes a continuing threat to society,” reads the application.
During the punishment phase of Williams’ trial, the state argued Williams was a continuing threat to society and, by being such, should be sentenced to death. The 12-member Rockwall County jury agreed and sentenced Williams to death on December 17, 2014.
The court had previously granted a funding order which awarded a sum of money sufficient to obtain the medical testing at the radiology department at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas.
Williams’ defense requested he be transported “as soon as practicable, and no later than January 5, 2015,” to prepare for a motion for new trial to be filed before a January 16, 2015, deadline.
Williams is currently on death row in the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas.
