Friday, June 22, 2007

Death penalty upheld for killer of teenager


Posted on Fri, Jun. 22, 2007

Ronnie Keith Williams will die by lethal injection for the rape and murder of a pregnant teenager that left her unborn child severely impaired, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

On Jan. 26, 1993, eight months after being released from prison because of overcrowding, Williams attacked 18-year-old Lisa Dyke in Wilton Manors.

He stabbed her 18 times in a violent frenzy that permanently injured her unborn child.

One of the knife wounds penetrated the pregnant woman's womb and cut her baby's leg. Dyke lived 19 days after the attack and doctors delivered her son, Julius, before she died.

Today, Julius must breathe and eat through tubes.

He cannot talk or move his limbs without help.

A jury voted 11-1 to recommend that he be executed, but the Florida Supreme Court granted him a new trial because of an error by a juror. Williams was convicted again in 2004 and given another death sentence.


-- GARY FINE

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