In the early morning of February 21, 1981, a 22-year-old woman was attacked in her bedroom in Chatham, Louisiana. Her attacker had entered through the window of a spare bedroom, and he raped the woman and beat her with a piece of wood.. The victim tried to reach a rifle she had in the room, but she was too injured to get to it. After the attack, the attacker turned on a light, and rummaged through her dresser.
After the perpetrator left, the victim called her cousin, who came to the victim’s house after contacting the victim’s father and attempting to reach the police. The victim told her cousin that she had been attacked in her sleep and that the attacker kept talking to himself.
She also told her cousin and her father that her attacker was 16-year-old Michael Anthony Williams, whom the victim had been tutoring in math.
The victim’s father took his daughter to his house and arranged for her to be taken to the hospital. He then went to a justice of the peace and obtained a warrant for Williams’s arrest. Williams was arrested that same day at his grandmother’s house,where he was living.
The victim was taken to several hospitals due to the severity of her injuries, which included 11 broken bones.. A rape kit was collected, and her nightgown and robe were taken into evidence.
Police found blood in many places in the victim’s bedroom. In the mud outside of the window of the spare bedroom, the police obtained footprints. They photographed a partial shoe print inside the house. The victim’s bedding was also collected. Two partial fingerprints were lifted, but the police determined them insufficient for comparison.
In the fall of 1980, Williams had been expelled from school and began attending night classes The victim, a recent graduate of nearby Grambling State University, said she had begun tutoring him in math, but that lasted only a few weeks because they had an altercation. The altercation was an argument that had escalated into a physical incident in which the victim struck Williams with a laundry basket and a soda bottle.
After that incident, Williams had been arrested in November 1980 when he came to the victim’s house and threw rocks at the house, breaking a window.
Williams had been released on February 5, 1981. While in jail. Williams had written to the victim, saying he was in love with her. He also telephoned her.
On February 20, 1981, the day before the attack, Williams argued with the victim in a store, then left. That night he was seen with a friend at a church revival.
When the police arrested Williams, his grandmother and sister said they had been home on the night of the attack, and that Williams had come home from church at about 11:00 p.m. and remained there all night.
Police found Williams’s bedroom window open but no signs that he had climbed in or out of it. They searched for clothing that matched the description given by the victim: navy blue knit jacket and sweater. They did not find any matching clothes. Investigators then looked for Williams’s shoes in his grandmother's house and in the house of a neighbor. They found no shoes that could have left the footprints found in the mud at the victim’s house. No blood was found on Williams's clothes.
The police drove Williams back to the victim’s house, and they said he tried to run away. He was caught and taken to jail, where he was examined. Investigators found no scratches, cuts, or abrasions. They also collected hairs from him.
In May 1981, Williams went to trial in Jackson County District Court, represented by Douglas Stokes. The prosecution presented evidence that the victim had known Williams since he was a little boy, that he had bothered her in the past, that they had an altercation at the store, had thrown rocks at her house, and that he had threatened to take her to the woods and beat her. Their last interaction had occurred on the night before the attack.
The victim testified that after the attack began, she sat up in bed and saw Williams standing over her bed. She saw him by the light of the full moon and the streetlight that was in front of her house. She said that she called him by name and asked him to stop. She recognized his voice after he began talking to himself. The victim said that although the perpetrator partially covered her face with bedding, she could still see and that she was sure it was Williams.
The rape kit had been sent to the North Delta Crime Laboratory. During serological testing, A and H blood antigens were found, but no determination could be made about the attacker because the victim had blood type A and was a secretor, producing A and H antigens. Spermatozoa were found on the vaginal swab, as well as on the nightgown and robe.
Williams testified and denied committing the crime. He admitted that he had had a crush on the victim and had bothered her after she refused to be his girlfriend. He also admitted to writing and calling her while in jail and that he had threatened to take her to the woods and beat her.
Williams testified that he and a friend had gone to a church revival on the night of the crime. He said he got home around 11:00 p.m. and went to bed, waking up at around 8:00 a.m. His grandmother testified that she had let him in the house because he did not have a key. She woke up at about 7:30 a.m. and Williams was still asleep in his room. Williams’s sister testified to the same facts. Both his grandmother and sister testified that Williams did not shower after he came home or during the night. They also testified that Williams only had one pair of athletic shoes. The footprints found outside the victim’s window were made by athletic shoes, according to testimony.
The prosecution argued that Williams had climbed out of his bedroom window in the middle of the night, walked to the victim’s house, committed the crime, got rid of his clothing and shoes, and washed off the blood before returning home. His attempt to flee, the prosecutor argued, was proof of consciousness of guilt.
The defense argued that Williams was a teenager who ran because he had just gotten out of jail and did not want to go back for a crime he did not commit. None of the physical evidence found or introduced, including the clothes Williams was wearing that night, were linked to the crime.
On May 20, 1981, the jury took less than an hour to convict Williams of aggravated rape. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
In 2003, the Innocence Project client took Williams’s case. By that time, Stokes, Williams’s trial attorney, was an assistant district attorney in the Jackson County District Attorney’s Office. Stokes consented to DNA testing of the evidence.
In the fall of 2004, an order for testing was signed and the evidence was sent to Forensic Science Associates (FSA), a California DNA testing laboratory. The rape kit no longer existed, so the evidence consisted of the clothing and bedding collected from the victim.
FSA found several semen stains with spermatozoa on the victim’s nightgown and the inside surface of her robe. Testing revealed that there was a mixture of male and female DNA. Williams was excluded as the source of the spermatozoa on the victim’s clothing.
In December 2004 and January 2005, further testing was performed on the clothing evidence and another reference sample from Williams at the North Delta Crime Laboratory. The testing confirmed the initial results that excluded Williams.
In February 2005, the victim’s bedding was sent to Orchid Cellmark, a DNA testing laboratory. Another round of testing identified the same male DNA profile that had been identified in the victim’s clothing. Williams was again excluded.
On March 11, 2005, Williams’s conviction was vacated, the case was dismissed, and he was released from Angola. Subsequently, Williams was awarded $330,000 in state compensation.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 07-09-2026
