Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:10 am
And. um just so you know...Tookie Williams became a very religious man in jail, and was judged 'redeemed' by many before his execution.
I found him:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=242610
It is the exact picture - here the text:
Minister convicted of felony child abuse
Exorcism that killed boy may bring 5 years in prison
By DERRICK NUNNALLY
Posted: July 9, 2004
An exorcism that killed the autistic 8-year-old boy whom it was supposed to cure brought a felony conviction Friday for Ray A. Hemphill, a school maintenance worker who spent nights and weekends preaching at his brother's strip-mall church.
Wearing the same sharp gray suit he had worn earlier in the proceeding, Hemphill was handcuffed and led away to jail after a weeklong felony child abuse trial that drew international publicity, including a live broadcast on Court TV. He had been free without bail, but after the verdict Circuit Judge Jean DiMotto set bail at $10,000.
When sentenced Aug. 17, Hemphill faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and another five years of state supervision. Prosecutor Mark S. Williams said he does plan to request prison time.
The jury had deliberated four hours before convicting the minister of causing great bodily harm in the physical, two-hour prayer ritual performed on Terrance Cottrell Jr. on Aug. 22. Hemphill and others had hoped to heal the boy's mental state in the storefront Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith.
During the ceremony, Cottrell's mother and two other women restrained the boy's limbs while Hemphill laid across his chest and urged the demons - in the name of Jesus Christ - to leave, according to statements given to police in the days after the event.
None of the participants, including Hemphill, testified during the trial. Instead, Williams built a case from what they had told police last summer, and from Milwaukee County Medical Examiner Jeffrey Jentzen's autopsy finding that Terrance died of suffocation caused by compression during what the prosecutor described as a "makeshift exorcism" that was "bizarre."
"Any normal - and any abnormal - adult is going to say, 'Yeah, you can hurt that child very seriously,' " Williams told the jury.
"If he cared about that child, he would've prayed for him. There are other ways of getting a demon out of a child, I suppose."
Healing session defended
Hemphill's attorney, Thomas Harris, defended what he called a "prayer service" as an orchestrated, practiced ceremony, the 12th in a "non-traditional" series that had not previously harmed the boy.
"This is not mainstream stuff," Harris said. "It is out of the norm. Is it illegal? No."
He said Hemphill had devoted his three-week vacation to his belief that fervent prayer could heal Terrance's autism and had no way of knowing what an autopsy revealed: that the boy had high, possibly toxic, levels of three drugs in his system.
"He wasn't acting recklessly, and he didn't cause the death anyway," Harris said. "The drugs did."
Harris had singled out a prescription drug, Geodon - generically known as ziprasidone - as particularly unsafe because testing had revealed it can affect the heart. He claimed there was no evidence it had ever been proved safe for children.
"When did we start giving this garbage to kids?" Harris said to the jury.
Experts called by each side had differed on how the chemical levels found in the autopsy related to what was in Terrance's blood before he died, because organs sometimes release stored substances into the blood after death.
Chaotic ceremony
In his closing argument, Williams minimized the drugs' effects and focused on the circumstances of the two-hour ceremony: The night was hot and the church lacked air conditioning; Terrance could speak only a few words; he had scratched and kicked until he was restrained; and sweat covered his and Hemphill's shirts afterward.
"All the child could do was struggle and literally fight for his life," Williams said.
After the jury delivered its verdict, Hemphill's family declined to speak to a throng of reporters clustered outside the courtroom. Harris spoke for them.
"We're disappointed with the jury's verdict, and we have no further comment," Harris said.
Terrance Cottrell Sr. slammed District Attorney E. Michael McCann for not pursuing a homicide charge in his son's death.
"I don't feel that we got justice," Cottrell said. "The state wasn't too zealous to up the charge. They could've gotten a conviction on a higher charge."
Williams had not seemed assured the jury would convict Hemphill of causing the death. At the end of the trial, he gave the jurors the option of convicting the minister of a lesser child-abuse charge, but they chose the greater offense.
McCann did not return a message seeking comment on whether the three women, including Cooper, who assisted in the ceremony will now face criminal charges.
