The Citizens’ Voice
BARRE, Pa. — More details have emerged about the alleged motive behind the killing of federal correctional officer Eric Williams three years ago at United States Penitentiary at Canaan.
Less than 48 hours before the brutal slaying, Williams apparently caught inmate Jessie Con-ui smoking a cigarette in his prison cell and then threatened to “repeatedly search his cell” as punishment, attorneys for Con-ui said in a court filing on Monday.
The documents — seeking all notes and reports about interactions between Williams and Con-ui — were part of an additional discovery request by Con-ui’s public defenders before his capital murder trial, which is slated to begin in July.
Prosecutors say Con-ui ambushed Williams during nightly lockdown on Feb. 25, 2013, stabbed him 129 times and fractured his skull in multiple places.
Con-ui’s attorneys previously said the gang assassin would plead guilty if prosecutors abandoned their pursuit of the death penalty. Prosecutors declined, saying Williams’ family wants them to pursue a death sentence.
The Citizens’ Voice first reported that a search of Con-ui’s cell preceded the murder.
A day after the killing, Con-ui told a prison psychologist he killed Williams over “disrespect” because Williams ordered a shakedown of his cell, according to Con-ui’s disciplinary report, which the paper obtained months after the murder.
The officers “tore my house apart. Everything was on the floor, food on the floor, my things everywhere,” Con-ui said, according to the report. Con-ui said he realized after killing Williams that he had “overreacted,” the report said.
Con-ui, 39, is charged with first-degree murder of a federal correctional officer.
As he awaits trial, Con-ui is jailed at ADX Florence, the supermaximum security prison in Colorado known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
Before the attack, Con-ui had been scheduled to leave federal prison — where he was serving an 11-year drug trafficking sentence — to start serving a 25-years-to-life term for a 2002 murder in Arizona.
Authorities have said Con-ui was a member of the New Mexican Mafia.
Monday’s court filing also seeks access to a report about Con-ui’s alleged gang activity, including allegations by the government that he plotted to kill detectives investigating him in Arizona in 2003.
Copyright 2016 The Citizens’ Voice