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Joseph Williams Georgia Death Row

Joseph Williams was sentenced to death by the State of Georgia for a prison murder. According to court documents Joseph Williams would murder a fellow inmate for he believed the inmate told guards about his planned escape. Joseph Williams would be convicted and sentenced to death.

Georgia Death Row Inmate List

Joseph Williams 2021 Information

YOB: 1973
RACE: BLACK
GENDER: MALE
HEIGHT: 5’09”
WEIGHT: 210
EYE COLOR: BROWN
HAIR COLOR: BLACK

MAJOR OFFENSE: MURDER
MOST RECENT INSTITUTION: GA DIAG CLASS PRISON
MAX POSSIBLE RELEASE DATE: DEATH

Joseph Williams More News

The evidence adduced in Williams’s sentencing trial showed that on July 24, 2001, Williams was a jail inmate at the Chatham County Detention Center. See OCGA § 17-10-30(b)(9) (“murder was committed by a person in, or who has escaped from, the lawful custody of a peace officer or place of lawful confinement”). Seven other inmates, including Michael Deal, were being held in the same unit as Williams. Joseph Williams and four of the other inmates, Leon McKinney, Pierre Byrd, Michael Wilson, and John McMillan, discovered a loose window and used an improvised chisel to chip away at the wall around it. Deal inquired what the men were doing but left when he was told “to mind his own business.” Joseph Williams and other inmates began to suspect that Deal had informed, or was going to inform, the jail authorities about the escape plan. McKinney suggested stabbing Deal with the improvised chisel, but Williams objected that there would be too much blood and that their plan would be frustrated. The group then carried out an alternative plan to strangle Deal and make the killing appear to be a suicide. McKinney engaged Deal in a discussion about their relative body sizes and then, facing Deal, lifted him in a “bear hug.” Williams then began strangling Deal from behind with an Ace bandage. Deal fell to the floor but did not immediately lose consciousness. The evidence is unclear whether it was Wilson or Byrd, but one of those two men then assisted Williams by taking one end of the Ace bandage and completing the strangulation in a “tug-of-war.” Byrd invited Anthony King, an inmate who had been friendly with Deal, into Byrd’s cell to distract King as Deal’s body was moved. Williams then dragged Deal’s body to Deal’s cell, flushed the Ace bandage down the toilet, cleaned up blood and hair on the floor with a rag, flushed the rag, tied a bed sheet around Deal’s neck, and finally, with the assistance of McKinney and McMillan, lifted Deal’s body and tied the bed sheet to a grate in the ceiling to make the death appear to be a suicide. After the murder, Williams and Byrd favored also killing King and Dewey Anderson, but McKinney and McMillan objected. Byrd, later troubled by dreams about the victim, contacted his attorney, passed a note about the murder to a jail guard, and then directed authorities to the improvised chisel, the loosened window, and a letter about the murder written to him by Williams. Williams confessed in an audiotaped interview conducted by a GBI agent.

In support of the OCGA § 17-10-30(b)(1) aggravating circumstance, the State presented three certified convictions of Williams, one for the armed robbery of Harry Jaymes, one for the murder of Iris Hall, and one for the murder of Taureen Graham. The State also presented testimony regarding those three crimes. Harry Jaymes testified that Williams delivered some stereo equipment, that he gave Williams a cash gratuity from a bag of money, and that Williams returned with an accomplice two days later on May 27, 1999, hit Jaymes in the head repeatedly with a handgun, and threatened to kill Jaymes if he did not reveal where the bag of money was. Jaymes escaped, threw a brick through his car’s window to set off the alarm, and had a neighbor call police. A GBI agent testified that Williams confessed during an audiotaped statement, which was played for the jury, to the murders of Taureen Graham and Iris Hall. Williams explained in the statement that he had been hired to murder Taureen Graham’s older brother but that, on July 31, 1999, he murdered the wrong person. Janet Cooper testified that, during a drug deal on July 11, 1999, Williams held Cooper and Iris Hall at gunpoint, placed Cooper in a bathroom, and searched Hall’s house. As Cooper escaped from the bathroom window, she heard the shots that killed Hall. At Williams’s trial for Hall’s murder, Williams “made slashing gestures and gunshot gestures” toward Cooper. Williams later, in March 2004, gave a letter to Cooper in which he stated, “I’ve killed many men before that incident, even killed a couple afterwards.” The letter continued as follows:

August will be an even five years of incarceration for me. In those five years, I’ve killed two men, slit an officer’s throat with a razor, stabbed two inmates, and whipped my first lawyer’s ass. I am who I am, Janet. Those walls can’t stop me.

The evidence also showed that Williams had committed several other criminal acts. A criminal defense attorney testified that Williams struck him repeatedly during a jailhouse interview on September 28, 2001. A prison guard testified that Williams slashed his face and throat with a razor blade embedded in a newspaper on December 17, 2001. Testimony from two prison officers to whom Williams confessed and testimony from the surviving victim showed that Williams murdered one prison inmate and repeatedly stabbed another with an improvised weapon on January 26, 2003. In his audiotaped confession about the 2003 prison attack, Williams stated that he had also planned to kill a third inmate that day but the man’s cell door had been locked.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ga-supreme-court/1273779.html

Pete Vanwinkle Arizona Death Row

Pete Vanwinkle was sentenced to death by the State of Arizona for a prison murder. According to court documents Pete Vanwinkle was awaiting trial for attempted murder when he murdered his cellmate at the Fourth Avenue Jail. Pete Vanwinkle would be convicted and sentenced to death

Arizona Death Row Inmate List

Pete Vanwinkle 2021 Information

ASPC Eyman, Browning Unit
PO Box 3400
PETE J. VANWINKLE 159162
Florence, AZ 85132
United States

Pete Vanwinkle More News

Pete Vanwinkle was sentenced to death for the murder of Robert Cotton. Vanwinkle was awaiting trial in the Fourth Avenue Jail on charges of attempted 2nd degree murder and misconduct involving weapons. Cotton was in jail awaiting trial on theft charges. On May 1, 2008, Vanwinkle brutally strangled and beat Cotton to death inside his cell. The majority of the murder was captured on the jail’s video surveillance.

Pete Vanwinkle Other News

On May 1, 2008, when Maricopa County Jail inmates VanWinkle and Robert were out of their cells for recreation time, jail videos show Robert, who walked with a visible limp, climbing the stairs to the second level of cells. Robert looked backward twice and appeared to talk to VanWinkle.² When he reached the second tier, Robert stood outside VanWinkle’s cell. VanWinkle ascended the stairs less than a minute later, appearing to speak to Robert, who then walked into the cell.

¶ 3 Before VanWinkle entered his cell, he walked into a shower area next door. A few seconds later, he entered his cell. For about one minute, VanWinkle and Robert stood in the cell outside the view of the jail surveillance camera. When they came back into view, VanWinkle was on top of Robert, hitting him. After a brief struggle, Robert became still.

¶ 4 Then, for approximately eighteen minutes, VanWinkle continued to beat Robert, strangling him, stomping on him, punching him, and jumping up and down on his motionless body. The video reflects that VanWinkle took several breaks to rest and wipe the blood from his hands before resuming the attack.

¶ 5 VanWinkle then dragged Robert’s body from the cell and tried to push it through the railing onto the first level. When he could not do so, VanWinkle went downstairs, got a drink of water, and waited for jail staff to respond. Within minutes they handcuffed VanWinkle and tried unsuccessfully to revive Robert.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/az-supreme-court/1609378.html

Thomas Riley Arizona Death Row

Thomas Riley was sentenced to death by the State of Arizona for a prison murder. According to court documents Thomas Riley would murder another inmate in order to enter the Aryan Brotherhood. According to prison officials the victim was killed because he refused an order from the Aryan Brotherhood to commit an act of violence. Thomas Riley was convicted and sentenced to death.

Arizona Death Row Inmate List

Thomas Riley 2021 Information

ASPC Eyman, Browning Unit
PO Box 3400
THOMAS M. RILEY 135692
Florence, AZ 85132
United States

Thomas Riley More News

In June 2008, Riley and the victim Sean Kelly were inmates at the prison complex in Buckeye.
The prison unit in which they were housed is divided into four pods. Inmates are not permitted to
enter a pod in which they do not live. Riley was housed in Pod A, and Kelly was housed in Pod
C. On the evening of June 29, Riley and his cellmate entered Pod C and attacked Kelly in his cell,
stabbing him 114 times with prison-made shanks. After the attack, Riley changed clothes in
Kelly’s cell, leaving behind a bloody pair of pants with his inmate card inside its pocket and a
bloody shirt imprinted with his inmate number.
The corrections officer in the Pod C control room observed Riley and his cellmate standing at the
outer doors of Pod C and directed them to leave the pod. She testified at trial that Riley looked
happy and had his hand on his cellmate’s shoulder in a congratulatory manner. Shortly thereafter,
corrections officers discovered Kelly’s body and quickly identified Riley and his cellmate as
suspects. When the officers arrived at Riley’s cell, they found blood on both Riley and his
cellmate, a pair of socks with blood and Riley’s inmate number on them, and more blood on the
sink, toilet, and the inmates’ personal items. Later DNA testing confirmed the blood was Kelly’s.
Nearly two years after Kelly’s murder, another inmate gave investigators a letter he had received
from Riley. A document examiner confirmed through handwriting analysis that Riley had written
the letter, and a fingerprint examiner found Riley’s fingerprints on it. In the letter, Riley chronicled
his journey to full Aryan Brotherhood membership and his involvement in Kelly’s murder,
including numerous graphic details of the crime.

https://www.azcourts.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=sz47dQ9MCis%3D&portalid=45

William Jay Gollehon Montana Death Row

William Jay Gollehon was sentenced to death by the State of Montana for a prison murder. According to court documents the victim, Gerald Pileggi, was beaten to death with a baseball bat. William Jay Gollehom was serving a 130 year sentence for the murder of a woman. William Jay Gollehom was convicted and sentenced to death

Montana Death Row Inmate List

William Jay Gollehon 2021 Information

DOC ID# 19043
NAME: William Jay Gollehon
CURRENT STATUS: Secure
LAST STATUS CHANGE: Monday, October 7, 1991
GENDER: Male
INFORMATION CURRENT AS OF: Monday, March 15, 2021
Secure:
Montana State Prison
400 Conley Lake RD
Deer Lodge, MT 59722
(406) 846-1320

William Jay Gollehon More News

On September 2, 1990, the badly beaten body of inmate Gerald Pileggi was found lying in the exercise yard of the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Montana.¹ Several witnesses had seen inmates William Jay Gollehon and Douglas Turner both strike Pileggi multiple times with baseball bats. An autopsy revealed that Pileggi died from massive head injuries, including a blow to the top of the head which had caved in part of his skull, as well as a blow to the side of his face which had collapsed his forehead, torn his brain, and ruptured his eyeball.

Gollehon and Turner were jointly charged with deliberate homicide for the beating death of Pileggi. The information was later amended to add an alternative count of deliberate homicide by accountability .² The difference between these counts, as explained by the Montana Supreme Court, is that the “charge of deliberate homicide by accountability allowed the jury to convict both men involved in the deliberate homicide without having to make the determination of who struck the fatal blow.” State v. Gollehon, 864 P.2d 249, 261-62 (Mont.1993) (“Gollehon I ”). After a joint trial, the jury found Gollehon and Turner guilty of deliberate homicide by accountability. Both were sentenced to death.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1545495.html

Douglas Turner Death

Death row inmate Douglas Turner was found hanging dead in his maximum security cell at Montana State Prison early Tuesday morning.

Guards doing their routine rounds of the building found Turner, 31, hanging from a part of his cell around 4:15 a.m. Tuesday, said Cheryl Bolton, a prison spokeswoman.

“It looks like an apparent suicide,” Bolton said.

Turner was pronounced dead Tuesday morning by the Powell County coroner who was called to the prison. His body was taken to the state crime lab in Missoula for an autopsy, which is required any time an inmate dies alone in prison, Bolton said.

Turner was a nine-time murderer who spent almost half his short life behind bars. He killed for the first time in 1987 — less than a month after his 16th birthday — when he shot dead three neighbors in his hometown of Glendive. Although not legally an adult, Turner was sentenced to 100 years at the state prison in Deer Lodge. Two years later, he and another inmate, William Jay Gollehon, beat to death fellow prisoner Gerald Pileggi with a baseball bat while the three were recreating in the prison yard.

Turner was sentenced to death for Pileggi’s murder and transferred to the prison’s highest-security building.

Less than year later, Turner took part in the 1991 deadly riot at the building, killing five other inmates. He was sentenced to life for the murder

Just how long Turner’s life would have been was up in the air. He had no execution date, Bolton said, and his latest appeal of his death sentence are still pending before the Montana Supreme Court.

Many details of the death have not been released. Bolton said she wouldn’t say what was in his cell because the death is still under investigation. Neither would she say if Turner had ever tried to kill himself before or if he was on a suicide watch at the time of his death, citing medical confidentiality.

In recent years, she said, Turner was not known as an unruly inmate. He had not received any disciplinary write-ups in the last seven years and he was not being punished for bad behavior at the time of his death.

Turner’s life was isolated. He was locked down in his one-man cell most of the time. He ate meals in his cell. He had not been outside the prison in some time, Bolton said. Condemned inmates are allowed out of their cells only to shower and to recreate in outdoor cages or a small internal day room for an hour-and-a-half every other day. Turner rarely ventured into the cages, Bolton said.

In Glendive, where his mother lives, Turner is still known as an infamous criminal.

“As far as I know, he is the most prolific murderer I’ve heard of in the state,” said Dawson County Attorney Scott Herring.

His family is expected to handle the funeral, Bolton said, but if that changes, the prison will bury him in a special part of the Deer Lodge cemetery reserved for deceased inmates.

https://billingsgazette.com/news/local/9-time-killer-hanged-in-prison-cell/article_3ebc026d-96fc-5093-b052-51e10f03d4d7.html

Patrick Schroeder Nebraska Death Row

Patrick Schroeder was sentenced to death by the State of Nebraska for a prison murder. According to court documents Patrick Schroeder was already serving a life sentence for murder when he murdered his cell mate by strangulation. At his trial Patrick Schroeder would tell the judge if he was given another life sentence he would keep killing until he received the death penalty. Patrick Schroeder was sentenced to death.

Nebraska Death Row Inmate List

Patrick Schroeder 2022 Information

TECUMSEH STATE COR INSTITUTION

Patrick Schroeder More News

The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday upheld the death sentence of a prison inmate who admitted that he killed his cellmate, then told a corrections officer afterward that he would “kill again” if he weren’t sentenced to death.

Patrick Schroeder was already serving a life sentence for the 2006 slaying of a Pawnee County farmer when he was charged, and convicted, of choking his cellmate to death at the Tecumseh State Prison in 2017.

“If given another life term, I will kill again and we will be right back in court doing this all over again,” Schroeder wrote in a statement shortly after cellmate Terry Berry was found unconscious in their cell. Berry was pronounced dead four days later at a Lincoln hospital.

On Friday, the Supreme Court considered the automatic appeal granted to all inmates who receive the death sentence.

Schroeder, now 42, served as his own attorney during his trial for the murder of Berry, a 22-year-old who was placed in a solitary confinement cell designed for one inmate over Schroeder’s objections.

Berry was within two weeks of his release on a conviction for second-degree forgery, but Schroeder opposed being paired with him, calling him unsanitary and “a loudmouth, a punk,” who would not quit talking. Schroeder told his jailers that “something was going to happen” unless Berry was moved out of his cell.

At his trial, Schroeder submitted no evidence in his defense, or in opposition to prosecutors’ arguments that he deserved the death penalty.

But attorneys appointed to present his automatic appeal objected to the imposition of the death penalty, saying that the three-judge panel that sentenced him to death ignored mitigating circumstances, such as Schroeder’s dysfunctional childhood and the undue pressure caused by pairing him with a cellmate he detested.

Sarah Newell of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy also argued that the state had an ulterior motive for seeking the death penalty — “to avoid and detract” from possible civil liability for placing two incompatible inmates in a cell designed for one prisoner.

Prosecutors with the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office, meanwhile, argued that Schroeder was not under “unusual” pressure, but acted to kill Berry out of “displeasure,” and that his actions were “deliberate” and “pretty cold-blooded.”

The three-judge panel that sentenced Schroeder to death ruled that while he “expressly welcomed” the death penalty, “it is the law, and not his wishes, that compels this panel’s ultimate conclusion.”

The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Judge Jeffrey Funke, said that even though a corrections officer had a “gut feeling” that Berry was in danger by being placed with Schroeder and had even tried to get the assignment reversed, Schroeder made no formal request that Berry be removed and did not indicate that his cellmate was in “mortal danger.”

In comparing the case with other death penalty cases, the court found that it was similar to the case of David Dunster, who was serving a life sentence for two murders when he killed his cellmate and was sentenced to die. While the two cases are not “a color match,” they were sufficiently similar to justify the death sentence for Schroeder, Funke wrote.

https://omaha.com/state-and-regional/supreme-court-upholds-death-sentence-for-tecumseh-inmate-who-killed-cellmate/article_244b71b0-06f0-513d-8101-f946b2ee6dc5.html

Patrick Schroeder Death

atrick Schroeder, the man sent to death row in 2018 for killing his cellmate, died Monday, according to the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.

Laura Strimple, chief of staff for the state’s prisons system, said the 45-year-old died at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution, which is home to death row.

The cause of Schroeder’s death has not been determined, she said.

He is the fifth death row inmate to die while awaiting execution by the state.

Arthur Gales, 55, died last year of cancer. In 2015, Michael Ryan, 66, died of natural causes. David Dunster, 56, died of a health-related issue in 2011, and Roger Bjorklund, 39, of a heart attack in 2006.

“Mr. Schroeder had a hard and complicated life and we are saddened to hear of his death. His death like all deaths leaves behind people who loved him and who will miss him now that he is gone,” said Todd Lancaster of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy.

Schroeder’s death leaves 11 men on Nebraska’s death row.

As is the case whenever an inmate dies in custody, a grand jury will review the death.

In 2018, Carey Dean Moore was the last inmate to be executed in Nebraska.

Moore, 60, was sentenced to death on two counts of first-degree murder in Douglas County in the 1979 deaths of Omaha cab drivers Reuel Van Ness Jr. and Maynard Helgeland. He had been on death row 38 years.

Schroeder had been serving a life sentence for killing 75-year-old Pawnee City farmer Kenny Albers when on April 15, 2017, he strangled Terry Berry in a cell at the Tecumseh prison.

Schroeder pleaded guilty to that crime and didn’t fight the death sentence.

When the three-judge panel pronounced his sentence, Judge Vicky Johnson said it was the law, and not the defendant’s wishes, that compelled the judges to choose a death sentence.

“Mr. Berry’s murder was disturbing in its own right and especially cruel,” particularly because he was two weeks from his release and Schroeder knew it, she said

Prosecutors alleged just one aggravator needed to make the case eligible for the death penalty — that Schroeder had previously been convicted of another murder — and Schroeder, who represented himself, chose not to fight the death penalty and made no argument or case for why the judges shouldn’t give it to him.

He admitted to strangling Berry, 22, because he wouldn’t stop talking.

At the time, Schroeder was in prison on a life sentence for beating Albers with a nightstick during a robbery in 2006 and dumping him, still alive, into an abandoned well. Albers died there.

Last year, the state agreed to pay $479,000 to Berry’s family to settle the lawsuit it filed over his killing.

Schroeder’s case brought questions and scrutiny from state senators and prisoner advocates alike who saw the killing as a failure of a prison system beset by one problem after another. Many asked how Berry had come to share a cell with Schroeder.

At Schroeder’s plea hearing, Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Doug Warner said Schroeder and Berry had shared cell No. 16 in a segregation unit from April 10 to April 15, the night a corrections officer doing normal checks came by and Schroeder said there was “something he needed to get out of his cell.

Berry was lying unconscious on the floor with a towel around his neck.

He was taken to a Lincoln hospital, where he died five days later.

https://journalstar.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/patrick-schroeder-on-nebraskas-death-row-for-killing-cellmate-dies-in-prison/article_37115cb0-65fb-5458-8781-9dc4be6ae94e.html