Did "diabetic rage" play role in Texas DA killings?
NORTH TEXAS - Less than a month after he was sentenced to death for the murders of a district attorney and the district attorney's wife, the state of Texas has agreed to have former Justice of the Peace Eric Williams examined to see if his murderous rampage was triggered by a damaged brain, reports CBS DFW.
Williams' brain scan was scheduled for Thursday Jan. 8 at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, according to the station.
While the test was initially denied by a judge, sources tell the station that defense lawyers pushed for the examination in hopes that it will show that health reasons, possibly caused by diabetes, affected Williams' brain, driving him to shoot and kill Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia, the night before Easter Sunday 2013.
Last month, Williams was sentenced to death for the crimes. The judge who presided over his trial has since retired, leaving appeals to state District Judge Webb Biard of Paris, Texas, who ultimately granted Williams' wishes for a brain exam.
Sources tell CBS DFW that defense lawyers hope that any medical proof that Williams is mentally disabled will result in the dismissal of the conviction and the need for a new trial. If that doesn't happen, the sources say, Williams is hoping the test results will at least lessen his punishment, sparing him from the death penalty.
The McLellands' bullet-riddled bodies were found in their home in Forney, east of Dallas, two months after Mike McLelland's top prosecutor, Mark Hasse, was gunned down as he walked to the county courthouse in Kaufman.
Williams is also charged with capital murder in Hasse's death. Prosecutors argued during his trial that Williams acted out of rage and revenge because Hasse and McLelland had prosecuted him for felony theft of county computer equipment a year earlier.
The conviction cost Williams - a former honors student and Eagle Scout - his job as a lawyer and as an elected Justice of the Peace in Kaufman County.
CBS DFW reports the county auditor's office shows that taxpayers have so far paid just under $350,000 to prosecute Williams, with an additional $20,577 being spent on his estranged wife, Kim, who pleaded guilty to being an accomplice and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Last week's examination of Williams was not expected to be expensive, costing taxpayers only a few hundred dollars, according to a medical source who spoke to the station on condition of anonymity.