Eddie Lee Williams’s court-ordered retrial for the 2014 murder of Marcus Ortiz in a drug deal gone bad won’t take place before Feb. 24, now that a Lebanon County judge has given him more time to find an attorney.
Williams was convicted in 2015 of 1st-degree murder and related crimes for the fatal shooting of Ortiz in a Lebanon apartment complex. A second man was wounded. Prosecutors alleged that Williams was accompanied by two others during the shootings.
After a series of appeals to state and federal courts, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania awarded Williams a new trial because Judge Samuel Kline, who presided over the original trial, improperly let the jury know that one of the accomplices, who was not present at trial and could not be cross-examined, had confessed and implicated Williams in the killing.
Lebanon County District Attorney Pier Hess Graf unsuccessfully appealed the new trial order to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
The retrial was set to start on Thursday, Jan. 2, but Williams told President Judge John Tylwalk at a brief Dec. 24 status hearing that he had not been able to find an attorney to represent him. At a November status hearing, Tylwalk allowed attorneys contacted by Williams’ relatives to withdraw as his counsel for the retrial.
At the Dec. 24 hearing, Tylwalk asked Williams, as he sat alone at the defense table, surrounded by deputy sheriffs, if he was ready for trial on Jan. 2. Williams answered, “I’m not representing myself.”
Williams has been an inmate in the state prison system since his 2015 conviction. In setting Feb. 24 retrial date, Tylwalk noted that the U.S. District Court has ordered that Williams should be released from custody if his retrial doesn’t start by Feb. 28.
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