Nushawn Williams, Who Knowingly Infected 13 Women and Girls with HIV and Had Unprotected Sex With Other Unsuspecting Women and Girls, May Not Get Out of Jail Soon After All
Hat tip to Rippa over at The Intersection of Madness and Reality.
Remember this case from the Nineties?
I thought the guy was going to die in prison. Nope. The State of New York now is trying to keep his ass in the slammer, either locked up in prison or in a mental health facility. The Nineties case of Nushawn Williams was so notorious in that Williams, who knew that he was HIV positive, unfeelingly and continuously had unprotected sex with numerous (and mostly white) young women and girls up and down the state, particularly in a little southwestern New York hamlet called Jamestown.
If you don’t recall, let me refresh your memory from a Newsweek dated November 1997:
Nushawn Williams’s legacy of death, disease and tragedy will last for years. Arrested and convicted of selling crack to a New York City undercover cop, he is being held under suicide watch at Riker’s Island, the mammoth city jail near La Guardia Airport. In a few weeks he will be turned over to authorities in Chautauqua County to be prosecuted as a modern-day Typhoid Harry–to face charges that he knowingly infected six women, including a 13-year-old girl, with the AIDS virus. The true number of his victims is almost certainly higher. According to state and local public-health officials, Williams had sex with up to 43 women in Chautauqua County and at least 28 more in New York City. Although he is certainly not the first sexually hyperactive HIV carrier to make headlines, he may be the first person in the United States to be publicly identified and criminally charged with spreading AIDS. “”This appears to be precedent-setting,” says Dr. Robert Berke, the Chautauqua County commissioner of health.
Yes, that Nushawn Williams. That trifling Nushawn Williams.
Well, now he calls himself Shyteek Johnson. Doesn’t matter how it’s pronounced–either SHYteek or SHITeek. It also doesn’t matter what he calls himself. I think people keep his name in the backs of their minds. I know I did when I recognized his picture recently. When I first heard about this in the Nineties, I think I was revulsed for a day or so, looking at the news reports. It didn’t matter if it was a casual encounter or not, you just don’t do these kinds of things to other people, especially the most vulnerable, women and girls, no matter who they are. What, he couldn’t say no ? He couldn’t say, well, I have to use a condom, got one? He couldn’t say, no, you really wouldn’t want what I have. Instead, he was going to continue to seduce as many poor and emotionally insecure or problematic women as possible and laugh his way to the grave.
In another way, I thought, this plays straight into the fears and racism of whites who feel that blacks spread disease and promiscuity in their relationships with others. Um, just who is more promiscuous? Which racial group has the lockdown on virtue?
In one report, he said that he had forgotten that a clinician had told that he was HIV-positive. In another, that Williams/Johnson thought the guy was lying. What? Sorry, but that’s not anything someone would conveniently forget or that someone medical would lie about to your face. That kind of knowledge makes people stop and reflect and not take their lives and the lives of people around him for granted. But hey, that’s for people who are coming morally correct–rich, middle-class, or poor. Drugs and not being taught anything coming up will do that kind of thing to you.
The son of a drug-addicted mother, Williams dealt drugs and robbed from the elderly. Prior to his HIV-related conviction, he had three previous convictions for various street crimes.
Two of the women he infected later bore him children with the HIV virus. An additional ten women have come down with the HIV virus, but some authorities now dispute whether Williams/Johnson was responsible.
Now 34, Williams/Johnson has served out his twelve-year sentence. However, there is something missing in Williams/Johnson’s make-up that have told authorities that he should never be released to live out his life with people. He gave a death sentence to 13 known women and possibly unnamed dozens more. There’s no way that he would not re-offend again. So what’s happening now?
The man dubbed the ‘HIV Predator’ appeared before a Supreme Court judge Wednesday, though no ruling was made on his fate.
The judge set a date for a probable cause hearing on May 6 at 2:00 p.m.
Jamestown native Nushawn Williams was convicted for knowingly infecting more than a dozen women with HIV back in the 90’s. Williams is scheduled to be set free (in April) after completing his 12 year sentence, however a push is underway to keep Williams detained in a mental health facility.
State Senator Cathy Young of Olean has led the charge to keep Williams off the streets after a state psychologist determined he was not ready to be released.
The attorney general’s office is pushing for Williams to be kept in custody under the New York’s civil confinement law, which would force Williams to spend time in a psychiatric facility.
The attorney general’s office described 33-year-old Nushawn Williams in court papers as a mentally disturbed, sex-obsessed drug user who was unruly and sometimes violent during his 12 years in prison and would likely infect more women if set free.
He pleaded guilty in 1998 to charges of statutory rape and reckless endangerment after his behavior set off a panic in the small western New York town of Jamestown, where the dreadlocked convict was known as “Face” to the young, sometimes drug-addicted women and girls he charmed for sex.
Williams said nothing Wednesday during the first court appearance in the state’s efforts to have him confined.
Under a 3-year-old statute, the state can lock up a sex offender indefinitely if it proves the person has a mental abnormality and is likely to offend again. Williams, whose criminal sentence ended April 13, would be held at a medium-security psychiatric facility, with his case reviewed yearly.
“I’m just waiting for him to come home. I feel like he did his time,” his mother, Denise Williams, said after watching Wednesday’s hearing in state Supreme Court. “Ain’t nothing wrong with him.”
His wife, Nina Williams, added, “Everyone was waiting for him to come home. He was ready to get on with his life, start over.”
Um, yeah. I know that it’s his mother and wife talking, but in this case, I beg to differ.
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