MANSFIELD 20 years later, inmate maintains his innocence

Courts repeatedly have upheld Lewis Williams' conviction in a woman's death.
MANSFIELD (AP) -- Lewis Williams, facing execution over a woman's slaying almost 21 years ago, maintains in a death row interview that he's innocent of the crime.
"I wasn't there. I didn't do it," Williams said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press at Mansfield Correctional Institution. "I'm a victim of a miscarriage of justice, because I'm completely innocent."
Williams, 44, was convicted of killing Leoma Chmielewski, who was severely beaten and shot in the face in her Cleveland home Jan. 21, 1983. He said he was in her house the night she died but said he left before she was killed.
Police found coins scattered near Chmielewski's doorway, bank envelopes throughout the house and on the street and her purse with its contents emptied on the bedroom closet shelf, according to a March report by the Ohio Parole Board.
Prosecutors dismiss Williams' claim of innocence, saying courts have upheld his conviction several times.
"Any issue of his innocence has been litigated up and down the state and federal court systems," Jon Oebker, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said Monday. "No court has ever agreed with any of his claims."
His account
Williams said he was helping Chmielewski resolve a dispute over loud music with his cousin, who lived across the street. But he maintains he left to go to downtown Cleveland for the evening and didn't learn of her death until he was arrested at his mother's house Jan. 22, 1983.
He said Monday he does not know who killed Chmielewski.
Williams, a small balding man with a mustache, wore leg irons and his hands were shackled to chains around his waist during a 40-minute interview in a windowless room just off death row. He rattled off details about his case and spoke insistently about what he called the "false lies" that sent him to prison.
He disputed evidence presented against him, including a footprint on the victim's nightgown that matched his shoe and evidence of gun residue on a jacket found at his mother's house the day he was arrested.
Claims over testimony
Williams also said prosecutors trumped up trial testimony from two jailhouse snitches.
Oebker denied such a claim, saying Williams has unsuccesfully raised that issue several times. Prosecutors also told the parole board in March that Williams had given different versions of his story over the years, Oebker said.
In one statement, Williams said he was in the house when the gun went off but couldn't remember what happened, Oebker said. In another, he said the gun went off while he was wrestling with the victim's dog, Oebker said.
Williams was scheduled to be executed in June, but it was delayed after Judge Janet Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court allowed him to present his contention that he was mentally retarded. The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that executing the mentally retarded was unconstitutional.
Judge Burnside later rejected Williams' mental retardation claim after an expert hired by his attorneys determined he is not mentally retarded, Oebker said.
On Dec. 15, Judge Burnside denied Williams' request for a new trial. Williams has asked the federal courts once again to review his case.
Appropriate penalty?
Williams should not be executed even if he were guilty, said Stephen Farrell, an assistant state public defender who represented Williams in the past. The state's death penalty law is meant for Ohio's worst crimes, Farrell said, whereas this case was an isolated shooting with no sign of premeditation.
Gov. Bob Taft and the Ohio Parole Board have both rejected Williams' request for clemency.
Chmielewski's stepdaughter, Dorothy Beverly, testified against Williams before the parole board in March. Beverly declined to comment Monday. She said in a June court hearing that she was "totally outraged" that the state had let the case go on for 20 years.