thank you your honor it please the court denise young enjoy hall on behalf of the petitioner ron williams we are here today because ron williams has yet to receive the due process that the constitution promised him a fair trial and for sentencing a great number of issues resulted from the trial and sentencing he did receive where little evidence connected him to the crime i want to focus today on two issues a number of issues in this case but the time we have a lot won't permit discussion of all of them so the two issues i want to talk about today was the eyewitness identification by elizabeth taught and the unconstitutional death sentence that mr williams received and the related issues surrounding that and i actually want to reverse the order because the facts about his death sentence are so just doesn't go anywhere the linguistic problem and i disagree with that to disagree your honor it's not a linguistic problem because when you're looking at evidence and determining whether or not mitigating in order to put it in the scale remember we start out with a scale of aggravation in litigation and once the aggravation is found that scale goes up on the death side now we have to see what's going to get and what's going to be put into the scale on the litigation side and mr williams presented powerful evidence about mitigating the two prior convictions that the judge accepted as true admitted that he lied and framed to mr williams in exchange for lenient treatment on his own criminal problems that he had the judge said i accept that as true that murder in fact the evidence was that mr williams who he was convicted of murder but nobody was under the misapprehension that he was actually the one who pulled the trigger yes ok yes so you know that you had framed there wasn't evidence to support a stance because what the what the arizona supreme court said now we have church who makes a decision and then that decision gets to the arizona supreme court and they then take a look at it and that he had not killed anybody in those prior convictions the judge had accepted that as a fact and the other the other barrier that the trial judge erected in this case and to do that was we just talked about the first category of evidence that mr williams present there was a second category of evidence that mr williams presented and that had to do with what you probably we've all seen a lot i call classic navigation it's backward looking mitigation tell us about you know what happened to you tell us about your life he presented very very powerful evidence about the severe poverty in which he that none of this was mitigating because he committed a crime after that happened well that violates institutionally erroneous about that question he didn't say it wasn't relevant he said it doesn't mitigate the aggravating circumstance for me so so what's constitutional that may be wrong have in our excerpt of record and they are the declarations from mr williams uncle who needed the money to come out to talk about the family and what life was li the i can i can tell you a little bit of what each of them talked about and what what they did and i think what we need to think about is it's one thing to have mr williams which is what  had to happen here because the judge said i don't want to hear from anybody that hasn't seen you in the last ten years i don't want to hear from anybody from your childhood because the fact that you hadn't murdered murdered somebody in high school i don't want to hear from determination and had that been in the mix would it have made it would have fleshed out just like what happened in iraq it would have thrashed out mr williams background he would have had uncle and his cousin to talk about what and to to really bring to life what mr williams experiences have been growing up how those experiences let me give an analogy i could describe a painting to a beautiful beautiful painting and i could go on and on and on and on and you would say you know it sounds ok then i go get the mona lisa and i bring it in and you get to see the mona l they require that because mr williams isn't an investigator he's not a social historian and how awful how horrible that he had to get up there and say well i think this person would say this i think this person this at one point the judge in a right to interrupted him and said well i don't know why we need your brother here you should know you were in the same family you should know everything there is to know that mining town where nobody has funds to do anything and yet the judge repeatedly be stricken he wanted to mother he wouldn't pay to have his mother come out now what our mother could say we know what she would have said and when i disagree with that your honor is we have an investigator on the phone saying so what you got to say i think she doesn't know what you have is you have had so many issues it's hard to like everyone's but we want to give them all a proper consideration i was also interested in the issue about one of the witnesses who wasn't permitted to the argument was to testify that his statement when he was in the hospital was involuntary yes yes it was having trouble understanding that argument because it seem and told the jury it was a confession so it's and it's all having to do with that with two different words what the we have two different people who said  what's he doing here and he said he killed a bunch of people down south he killed some police officers which is depending on who you listen to mr williams mumbled no no no no and he turns  mr williams till after surgery he had no firsthand knowledge concerning the whole statement episode and the court already had the the medical records i do need to apologize to the court for at least three errors that it is correct that mr williams disputed that he killed the elderly john bunch out through the entire trial process including in the pre sentence report what was not in dispute was that the gun that he had purchased in for genya and was found on system since he was twelve years old williams in the record reports that his first contact with with the system was when he was sixteen or seventeen and he had a friend stole the gun he did also report that he had been stealing things since he was before he was a teenager so perhaps that's where the court got that impression i going to the question we go back to one hundred joy for just one happen or that wouldn't have happened if i hadn't been framed was that statement also after surgery was that pre surgery to bring certain witnesses for the litigation portion of the sentencing the claim is based on only six witnesses  the decorations from one nine hundred ninety seven or in the record have were never presented to the state court and even though the substance of their information is already in the record these affected the court's decision in imposing the death valley and i think the record is clear that the fortes concern with this who was forty one of the time the a you know young my inner child i think i've lost my my own sense that you understand what i'm asking i think you do that i think the judges position was from based on record was consider it terribly relevant home environment given the fact that he had been out of the environment for twenty some years but that's i mean it's perfectly clear that evidence about someone's trial hood in early years beyers on mitigation right it's character and as i understand the record the judge felt that in light of his violent past his three murder convictions that he didn't feel that talking about the weighing process that that is totally a state issue and what what this court would have to find on this issue is that by the judge not  that he had before him a person who he had watched for two and a half months he had just listened to a brilliant closing argument he understood that this was a brilliant person but he also understood this was extremely dangerous person so yeah like and did tell me that i didn't believe him i mean like and i believe it like it was saying was simply that he lied when he said that ron williams had confessed to him he didn't know anything about the crime itself so he this was a dangerous person he had he had a history of violent crimes and i it's from a fair reading the record seems to say that while he might have had a bad childhood that that does not excuse his violent past but it continues to he's in his forty's and that the death sentence is appropriate for this type of prove future dangerousness and it was unfair that the defendant didn't have his own mental health expert to combat that in in this in this case it was williams who requested to have a mental cooperated much more with the one that was appointed on his behalf and it's sort of like justice feldman said on another issue in this case as every experienced trial what the the psychologists found in the there's no one no expert mental health expert testified at the mitigation reports were certainly were submitted to both sides and to the court and it basically substantiated what was in the record before from the prior to the psychiatric reports that were in the record at least one definitely ordered because of a crime it was court ordered to have it because of  the present officer included comments from both his sisters as but they weren't they weren't there they were not there but there's no there's no copy of that i guess and and  well normally jurors expect mothers to testify on behalf of the priest and saucer spoke to other family members this absence of live testimony not important well because my understanding the law is that there is no constitutional requirement at sentencing to have live testimony that williams versus new york who's been cited recently and repeatedly stands for that proposition the point the under the eighth amendment the important thing is that he considered it and he did  the courtroom he didn't you couldn't see any of that you know it's just very hard for me i guess i'm the only mother that it's really really hard for me to imagine the judge just sitting there and having so little describe what a mother might the lifestyle that he had demonstrated repeatedly from long after he left his mother the fact that if his mother had came in testified from this record testify in person would not have changed the son's in this case she would have presumably had knowledge of williams as he encounters with law the law starting back before he was a teenager right right and i assume that the state would of cross examine on that absolutely he had reported that he had been a thief first part of your position that the good would have been offset by the bad certainly as you point in in most states where there is jury send saying you know that would not be the normal procedure because you would want to live witnesses judge sentencing is somewhat different the but the williams case is a first reamer case where the the court the state court against the jury's recommendation imposed death and did it based on present report information so i would say that there is at this point in time as there was back then no cost to tional right underneath the memory to present life testimony is there anything else that concerns the court that i might you i'd like to first turn to judge rules question and i apologize for not being able to tell you a little bit more about the pre sentence report that you ask about the prejudice that occurred is that the pre sentence report as i said was not at all favorable towards mr williams and one of the things that happened is that like many many people in this situation mr williams downplayed  childhood again we see that often but those statements were repeated throughout the pre sentence report where he said well sure my dad drank a little bit but it wasn't so bad and  against him i want to jump back for just a second to what mr todd just finished with and the question is is there a case out there and that says you have to allow proffer there wasn't anything more by the time miss miss williams died and she was alive at the time of this i am so sorry i don't know but she is no longer alive and hasn't been alive for a number of years so that's why you don't have anything from her you do have from her son you do have from nephews and brother but there is no with ineffective assistance of counsel that say how important it is better to get all the family members and i just throw out for example thank you very much