November 20, 2008
Ex-Con Gets Life in Horrific Torture, Rape
NEW YORK -- An ex-convict was sentenced to life in prison
Thursday for the sadistic, 19-hour rape and torture of a Columbia
University graduate student.
Robert Williams was convicted last month in Manhattan of
attempted murder, rape, kidnapping and arson.
His actual sentence -
422 years - was pronounced by state Supreme Court Justice Carol
Berkman, who said that for the sake of public safety she doesn't
ever want him to get out of prison.
The victim identified Williams in court while testifying about
her agonizing April 2007 ordeal.
He scalded her with boiling water;
tried to blind her with bleach; forced her to swallow fistfuls of
painkillers; and ordered her to gouge out her eyes with scissors.
He also glued her lips shut and gagged her with duct tape before
torching her apartment.
"This is a person who relishes and derives fun from inflicting
extreme physical pain on another human being. He enjoys
torturing," prosecutor Ann Prunty said at the sentencing.
Williams previously served eight years for attempted murder.
Defense attorney Arnold Levine said an appeal was planned and
asked that Williams receive psychiatric treatment in prison. The
defense had unsuccessfully tried to have him declared mentally
unfit to stand trial.
Levine had asked Berkman to sentence Williams "in a way to give
him hope of going home one day."
Replied the judge: "The defendant, by his own conduct, has
forfeited any hope of liberty."
When the trial began June 5, Prunty told jurors that Williams
had violated the victim "in every way imaginable - and in some
ways unimaginable," then tried to finish her off by burning her
alive. Tied up and left unconscious to die in the fire, the woman
woke up and used the flames to burn through some of her restraints
and escape.
Prunty credited the woman's intelligence and mental toughness
with helping her survive. The judge agreed, saying: "Everyone who
witnessed (the victim's) testimony in this courtroom had to be
impressed by her bravery, her intelligence and her extraordinary
grace."
The nearly three-week trial was unusual in that the defendant
was in court just once for a few hours. He was forced to show up on
the day the victim testified and pointed him out to the jury as her
rapist and torturer.
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