SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) - Jury selection is scheduled Monday in the death penalty trial of an inmate charged in a guard’s death in a federal prison in Pennsylvania four years ago.
Jessie Con-ui, 40, is charged in the February 2013 stabbing death of corrections officer Eric Williams at the Canaan federal prison in Waymart.
A federal judge on Thursday denied a prosecution motion to bar defense attorneys from calling witnesses to speak about how his possible execution would affect them, the (Wilkes-Barre) Times Leader (https://bit.ly/2pSx1QR ) reported.
But U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo said they won’t be allowed to weigh in on the death penalty but only to show “that the defendant has ’the capacity to be of emotional value to others.’”
Williams, 34, was working in a housing unit at the prison when he was attacked. Prosecutors allege Con-ui was angry after the guard ordered a search of his cell the previous day.
Authorities have said Williams was stabbed more than 200 times and was hit in the face, head and upper body. At one point, Con-ui cut his hand and stopped the attack to walk over to a shower and clean the wound before wrapping it in his shirt before continuing the attack, prosecutors allege.
Defense attorneys haven’t disputed that their client killed the victim but are opposing the death penalty and say the stabbing was retaliation for mistreatment by guards, not the calculated slaying prosecutors contend.
Con-ui has since been at a super-maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, where he’s serving 25 years to life for a 2002 gang initiation murder in Arizona.
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