After 22 years, falsely imprisoned man walks free

By Bill Torpy, Jeffry Scott, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 24, 2007

After almost 22 years falsely imprisoned, Willie O. Williams became a free man Tuesday night with a few simple pleasures in mind: a steak and potato dinner and a hot bath.

"I've done took a shower so long I just want to get in a bath tub," he told a swarm of reporters outside the Fulton County Jail, where he was processed out after being released from D. Ray James Correctional Facility in south Georgia, earlier in the afternoon.

Photo: Jenni Girtman/Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Willie O. Williams is released from Fulton County Jail on Tuesday night accompanied by his mother, Judy Beglar.

He seemed stunned at the attention and the rapidity of events as he blinked into TV cameras and glaring lights, surrounded by about 20 family members and friends, his mother, Judy Belgar, who clutched him as tightly as she would a young child.

It had only been five days since the Georgia Innocence Project discovered his DNA did not match a swab taken from the women he was convicted of raping in 1985. On Monday Fulton County DA Paul Howard announced he would free Williams, now 44.

When he walked out of the front of the jail, at exactly 10:02, dressed in a blazer, canvas slacks, and black and white tennis shoes, he seemed speechless. "How's everybody doing?" he said to reporters, smiling. "How's everybody doing?"

He answered rapid-fire questions shyly, saying several times "I don't know how to explain how I feel in words." He said what saw him through the years behind bars was God and his family. "I knew I was coming back," he said. "I never gave up."

He talked for about seven minutes, before members of the Innocence Project called the conference to an end and he boarded a taxi with his family. What did he most look forward to, he had been asked? "The rest of my life he said."

The day in 1985 her son was sentenced to 45 years in prison for a crime she knew in her heart he didn't commit, Judy Beglar couldn't bear to watch the travesty unfold. So she walked out as the jury returned to the courtroom, her gut telling her they would return a guilty verdict.

"I knew my child was innocent," said Judy Beglar Tuesday. "But to sit there and hear them say those awful things. It was like their mind was already made up. I just walked out."

Almost 22 years later as her son was able walk out to freedom, his mother t, too, was consumed of pher son, Willie O. Williams, did his own walking out Tuesday when he was released from prison. DNA tests showed he did not commit the rape he was convicted of in 1985.

"I always knew he was innocent, but other people knowing he was innocent was two different things," said Beglar.

Beglar said she wasn't angry, and she hoped authorities would pursue the man who committed the rape, but she was ready to see her son. He is now 44 and she hasn't touched him in five or six years. When they met they were usually separated by prison glass.

"I can't wait to hug him, to love on him," Beglar said, sitting at a table during an afternoon press conference at the offices of the Georgia Innocence Project, which pushed for the DNA tests.

On Monday, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard ordered Williams released from D. Ray James Correctional Facility in Folkson.

Fulton County sheriff's deputies made the about five hour drive to southeast Georgia, leaving late Tuesday morning. They expected to return him to Fulton County Jail where he would be released and give a brief press conference.

Beglar at first said she was angry and bitter about her son's conviction, based on eye-witness testimony by the rape victim and another woman who was attacked five days later.

"The anger lasted four or five years," she said Tuesday. "But being angry and bitter eats you up. It doesn't hurt anyone but you."

The Innocence Project legal clerk who pursued the DNA testing that freed Williams said earlier that finding the evidence in GBI files was a "miracle" because the physical evidence at first was thought to have been destroyed.

Now prosecutors want to compare the DNA from that swab to the DNA of another convicted rapist who has since been released from prison. The DNA technology was not available at the time of the trial, although Beglar recalls that her son, at the time of the trial, thought blood tests would prove him innocent.

"He told me 'Momma, they're crazy. There's a test they can give me to prove that I'm not the one.' " She said Tuesday she doesn't know what her son's future holds. They plan to take it one day at a time.

But one of the first things her son wants to do with his freedom is have dinner with his family, she said: "He told me he wants a steak and potato."