Williams Trial – Day 6: Testimony of Torture Expert

The Skagit Valley Herald reports on Friday’s Court Session in the Williams’ Case.  Please be aware that this is very hard to read and steel yourself before reading.  If you are sensitive to abuse triggers, you might want to forgo this link as well as the rest of the links in this blog post.

Here is a report and video from Kiro 7 TV.

John Hutson is a retired Attorney for the Navy and Marines who has spent 12 years studying torture and has testified before congress on the subject numerous times.  He was the only witness on the morning of Friday Aug 2, 2013.  Larry Williams’ lawyers questioned his qualifications since his expertise was in military and international situations, but the judge allowed his testimony providing he did not try to give a legal definition of torture.  He submitted a 3 page report based on hundreds of pages of information provided to him beforehand, admitting that he did not read every word.  His testimony in a nutshell was that the 2 children were unquestionably tortured.  It was not a close call, there were no doubts in his mind and there were no two ways about it.

The afternoon saw the testimony of various people who knew the Williams family.  They testified about things like how Carri disciplined her children (both what they saw and what she told them,) the plastic tubing which she used as a “spanking rod,” how Larry would prevent Immanuel from signing with a deaf man at church and how Hana got thinner and changed her behavior over the 3 years.

Then Detective Dan Luvera of the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office testified about how he collected the evidence and took photos after Hana died.  He showed them everything and discussed the autopsy, which he watched.

There is talk about some of the Williams’ biological children testifying on Monday.

Here is Maureen’s Report for Aug 2, 2013.  She gives a lot of details of Mr. Hutson’s testimony about what constitutes torture and motivations for torture. I must share this important quote from Maureen’s report:

Mr. Hutson: That said, it doesn’t matter what the motivation is for torture. There may be an excuse, but there is no justification. To me, this is the heart of the entire day, if not the entire case.

 

Leave a Comment





This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.