Carri and Larry Williams GUILTY! UPDATED
We have followed the Ethiopian adoptee abuse of Hana and Immanuel Williams from pre-trial to the trial.
The verdict came in a short time ago:
- Larry Williams not found guilty of homicide by abuse. Jury was not able to reach a verdict on this count.
- Larry Williams guilty of first-degree manslaughter.
- Larry Williams guilty of first-degree assault of a child.
- Carri Williams guilty of homicide by abuse.
- Carri Williams guilty of first-degree assault of a child.
Mother guilty of homicide in death of adopted Ethiopian girl
[Seattle Times 9/6/13 by The Associated Press]
#Williams Trial has all of the reactions. “Judge declares a mistrial on the homicide by abuse charge against Larry Williams” and “Carri Williams ordered held on $1.5m bail as she awaits sentencing” and “Carri being handcuffed by same detective who interviewed her children. Someone says, “I love you, Ca.””
Update: Carri was also convicted of 1st degree manslaughter. Both Larry and Carri plan to appeal. Next hearing is in October 2013. The court record does not show the date at this time. Carri was taken to jail and had a $1.5 Million bail set .Larry had a $750,000 bail set.
“Larry and Carri Williams were both convicted of first-degree manslaughter in Hana Williams’ death, and of first-degree assault of a child for abusing the younger boy they adopted from Ethiopia at the same time as the young teenage girl.
Carri Williams also was convicted of homicide by abuse in the death of the teenage girl, who witnesses say was starved and tortured. The jury could not reach a decision on that charge for Larry Williams.
The couple, who cast blame at each other during the trial, shared a look before the jury entered the courtroom in what may be the last time they see each other for a long while. As they have throughout the trial, they sat at different tables a few feet away from each other and never spoke to each other in court.
Skagit County Superior Court Judge Susan Cook has final say on sentencing, which could be several weeks away.
After the ruling, Carri Williams, who had been free on bail during the trial, was handcuffed and taken into custody. She was cuffed by Skagit County Sheriff’s Detective Theresa Luvera, who interviewed the Williams children after Hana’s death. Later, Luvera hugged two state children’s workers who had been involved in the investigation.
Cook set Larry Williams’ bail at $750,000 and Carri Williams’ bail at $1.5 million.
Each charge is a Class A felony, carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison and/or a $50,000 fine. Skagit County Prosecutor Rich Weyrich is recommending 14 to 18 years for Larry Williams and 27 to 37 years for Carri Williams. Larry Williams spent almost two years in jail while the case was pending and could get credit for serving that time.
The jury started deliberating Thursday after a seven-week trial that Weyrich said was the longest he could remember in his 35 years in Skagit County.
When she released them from duty Monday, Cook thanked the jurors and told them, “Take care of yourselves.”
At that, Larry and Carri Williams were led away.
Weyrich said he is undecided for now whether to re-try Larry Williams on the homicide-by-abuse charge, though Williams’ lawyer Rachel Forde said she doubts it will happen.
An appeal is likely, lawyers for both parties said.
“That, you can count on,” said Skagit County Public Defender Wes Richards, who represented Carri Williams. Richards and co-counsel Laura Riquelme declined to comment on anything else.
While Forde wouldn’t be assigned to represent Larry Williams in an appeal, she said she is confident it would go his way.
“He had to have caused Hana’s death, and there’s just insufficient evidence that he did,” she said, calling it a “tragic accident” that her client is “completely heartbroken” about. No one intended for Hana to die, she said.
She also spoke up for her client’s wife, echoing arguments defense lawyers made throughout the trial: the Williamses were bad parents, even abusive parents, but not criminals.
A key question in the trial had been Hana’s age. The charge of homicide by abuse applies only if she was younger than 16 when she died.
Her adoption paperwork indicates she would have been about 13 at the time, but her parents said they thought she was older, and various experts who examined her body were unable to definitively place her age below 16.
Still, jurors found they still had enough evidence to convict Carri Williams of homicide by abuse.
Spectators have filled the courtroom benches most days of the trial, including some family and friends of the Williamses sitting behind their defense teams.
Members of Seattle’s Ethiopian community drove up almost every day to sit on the prosecutors’ side in silent support of Hana.
One who came often was Metassibia Mulugeta, who called the case “heart-wrenching and unbelievable.”
After hearing the adopted boy testify one day, Mulugeta said he seemed to be thriving since leaving the Williams home.
“I don’t care about the testimony,” she said. “He’s alive.”
Hana’s death gave her eight adoptive siblings freedom, Mulugeta said.
“Deprivation of food. Deprivation of socialization, within the family. Deprivation of sleep. Deprivation of total freedom. I mean, (Hana) was under control in every sense, and they both were,” Mulugeta said. “…How long could she have lived and endured that?””
Williams Trial: Mother guilty on 3 counts, father on 2
[Skagit Valley Herald 9/9/13 by Gina Cole]
“Attorney Rachel Forde represented Larry Williams in the trial and said her client will appeal Monday’s verdict.
“Oh, we’re disappointed. It was unjust,” she said. “Actually a tragedy because Mr. Williams did not cause Hana Williams’ death. There was no theory and insufficient evidence of manslaughter in the first degree.”
The couple was accused of causing the death of Hana Williams in the backyard of the family home in May 2011. The girl died of hypothermia and malnutrition. Prosecutors say she was starved, beaten and forced outside as punishment.
Prosecuting Attorney Rich Weyrich spoke about the horrors that Hana Williams lived with after arriving in America from Ethiopia.
“She came to America, you know the American dream and all those sort of things, and you know it was more like ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,'” he said.”
Skagit Co. parents found guilty in death of adopted daughter
[KOMO News 9/9/13 ]
“The next court hearing for the couple will be in October.
After the trial many people of Ethiopian decent came to the courthouse to publicly express their appreciation that “justice had been served.” Then, many of them went to Hana’s grave for a brief prayer vigil.”
Jury convicts parents in Skagit abuse trial
[KIRO TV 9/9/13 ]
Update 2/January 20 : Carrie was sentenced to 37 year in prison. Larry was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
“Stay-at-home mother Carri Williams, 42, was convicted last month of homicide by abuse in connection with the 2011 death of 13-year-old Hana Williams, who was adopted in 2008.”
“The girl’s father, Larry Williams, 49, was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced on Tuesday to 28 years in prison, a representative in the clerk’s office said. The jury deadlocked on a charge of homicide by abuse against the man, who worked for the Boeing Co.”
“The sentences, handed down by Skagit County Superior Court Judge Susan K. Cook before a standing-room-only courtroom, represented the maximum allowable penalty for both defendants, said Skagit County prosecutor Rich Weyrich.
“It’s one of those cases that is very difficult to explain why it happened. I’m sure we’ll never have an answer,” said Weyrich adding he expects the defendants to appeal their convictions.
The case is one of several in recent years that has drawn attention to the vulnerability of children adopted by U.S. families from other countries.
Max Shatto, a 3-year-old born in Russia who was adopted by a family in Texas, died in January. Texas authorities determined the boy had succumbed to self-inflicted injuries and his parents were not charged in his death.
But Russian officials seized on the case as justification for a 2012 ban on adoptions by Americans.
Larry and Carri Williams were arrested in September 2011, more than four months after Hana’s death. Investigators say the girl had endured beatings, starvation, sleeping outside and using an outdoor toilet and that she had lost a significant amount of weight since her adoption.
The parents kept their family away from non-relatives, home-schooled the children and adhered to rigid principles described in a Christian parenting tome “To Train Up a Child,” investigators said.
Lawyers representing the couple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
U.S. adoptive mother gets 37 years for Ethiopian girl’s death
[Chicago Tribune 10/29/13 By Reuters]
Update 3: “Carri Williams, convicted in the abuse and death of her adopted daughter and abuse of her adopted son, cannot stop the adoption proceedings of five of her biological children, an appellate court ruled.
The court upheld a Skagit County judge’s denial of Williams’ request to intervene in the adoption proceedings.
She previously agreed to give up custody rights following her September 2013 convictions of homicide by abuse and first-degree assault of a child involving two Ethiopian children she and her husband adopted.
One of those children, Hana, died in the backyard of the family’s Sedro-Woolley-area home of hypothermia and malnutrition in May 2011.
Both Williamses are serving prison sentences.
Carri Williams tried to overturn a January ruling in Skagit County Superior Court that denied her request to halt the adoption of her children. She alleged that the adoptive parents were not following a previous agreement set by the court. The children range in age from 11 to 18 years old.
Williams argued in the appeal that the court should have treated her request as a motion to vacate her prior consent to terminate her parental rights and give up her children for adoption, and that the court should have appointed a lawyer to represent her in the matter.
Appellate judges disagreed, ruling that Williams’ appeal failed to show the lower court’s decision was “manifest constitutional error,” according to an opinion filed Monday in Washington Court of Appeals, Division One.
Williams, 44, was sentenced to just under 37 years in prison for her crimes.
Her husband Larry Williams, 51, was sentenced to nearly 28 years on conviction of first-degree manslaughter and first-degree assault of a child.
Skagit County prosecutors said the couple abused and neglected both children over the course of several years.
The adopted children, unlike their siblings, were fed frozen food and wet sandwiches, according to testimony. Hana was sent to a closet and sometimes to sleep in a locked shower room and even a barn behind the house.
She died of hypothermia, hastened by malnutrition and a stomach condition, after collapsing in the family’s backyard. Her age was never officially determined, but she was believed to be about 13.”
Appellate court affirms ruling on convicted mother’s dispute over adoption of her children [Go Skagit 11/18/15 by EVAN MARCZYNSKI]
Update 4:”A state appellate court ruled Monday that Carri and Larry Williams were justly convicted by a Skagit County jury in 2013 for their roles in the abuse and death of their adopted Ethiopian daughter.
Both Williamses, who were sentenced to decades in prison, appealed their convictions following a seven-week trial in Mount Vernon.
Carri Williams, 45, was sentenced to just under 37 years in prison after she was found guilty of homicide by abuse in the death of Hana Williams, the couple’s adopted daughter. Carri Williams was also convicted on one count of first-degree assault of her adopted Ethiopian son.
Her husband, Larry Williams, 52, was sentenced to nearly 28 years on first-degree manslaughter and first-degree assault of a child.
Skagit County prosecutors argued at trial that the couple abused and neglected their adopted children over several years.
The adopted children, unlike the Williamses’ biological children, were fed frozen food and wet sandwiches, according to testimony. Hana was sent to a closet and sometimes had to sleep in a locked shower room or a barn behind the house.
Hana died of hypothermia after collapsing in the family’s backyard on May 11, 2011. Her condition was hastened by malnutrition and a stomach condition.
Hana’s age was never officially determined, but she was believed to be about 13.
Carri Williams appealed her convictions on claims the court made multiple errors during her trial. She contended there was not enough evidence to support the prosecution’s argument that Hana was younger than 16 when she died.
The girl’s age was a key element in Carri Williams’ conviction on homicide by abuse, and was the focus of much testimony at trial.
Under Washington law, homicide by abuse only applies when the victim is younger than 16.
In their written opinion, the appellate judges acknowledged the jury heard conflicting testimony on Hana’s age.
The judges found sufficient evidence was presented to show Hana was under 16.
The judges highlighted testimony from Dr. Carolyn Roesler, who treated Hana at an orphanage in Ethiopia before the girl was brought to live at the Williamses’ home in Sedro-Woolley. Roesler’s testimony backed the prosecutors’ argument that Hana was within the age to support conviction of homicide by abuse.
Larry Williams argued in his appeal that not enough evidence was presented at trial to prove he played a criminal role in the death and abuse and that his lengthy sentence was extreme. He blamed his wife for Hana’s death, arguing on appeal that “the evidence at trial fell well short of establishing [his] guilt as an accomplice” to manslaughter, according to Monday’s opinion.
But appellate judges disagreed.”
Court Affirms Convictions of Williams’ in Adopted Daughter’s Death [Go Skagit 12/23/15 by Evan Marczynski]
KOMO reports both are going to appeal. Fer cryin’ out loud!
Not surprising as life in prison is a possibility. Remember, these are people that had no problem exhuming their daughter’s body.
I hope Carri has an intimate relationship with glue sticks, plumbing pipe, starvation, head-shaving, humiliation, her own jailhouse port-a-potty, belt-whipping on her feet, etc. from now on. I also hope her jailers take away her Bible because she has perverted every word in it and replace it with the Complete Works of the Marquis de Sade. I think she should also be spoken to only in the Ethiopian language so she knows how Hana felt. She is the personification of evil.
You forgot a cell without heat or air conditioning. Maybe they can blast Black Sabbath into her cell to replicate the gospel music Hana had to hear as punishment.
All her meals should be served frozen or otherwise inedible. Hana was served worse than prison food.
Carri, with her hang-ups on modesty isn’t going to like the group shower room at all.
Alas, if all that happened, some lawyer would file a suit against the state for deprivation of her rights.
Not surpring that they will appeal. Most people charged in these crimes do.
One shout out to the community who kept up with this case. Good for you guys.
I for one am glad these people got convicted. There are no tears in my eyes for them, no pity in my heart.
Thanks, Elizabeth.
On September 27, 2011 a COA complaint was filed against AAI about the Hana case. Roughly 301 days later, a response came that said “Because the complaint did not relate to a Hague Convention Accreditation standard, COA did not open an investigation of the complaint. ” DID NOT open. This is the same COA that employs Richard Klarberg who made $380,000 in 2010. COA has had 1 to 2 people to investigate and they often choose not to investigat.e What a pathetic joke.
The Williams will hopefully get 20+ years in prison, but AAI got off . The industry will not be cleaned up from the inside out or by schmoozing with them. We are going to have to continue to rally and embarrass them and bring awareness through the media.
“Carri Williams, convicted in the abuse and death of her adopted daughter and abuse of her adopted son, cannot stop the adoption proceedings of five of her biological children, an appellate court ruled.”
So now Carri Williams is finding out what it’s like to be treated like a birthmother.
Yep. Exactly what I was thinking.
Sadly, she’s not likely to grasp the parallel.