A DeKalb County jury Thursday began considering how to sentence cop killer William Woodard.
The question facing jurors: Is Woodard so evil he should be put to death, or does he deserve mercy because his troubled path began at birth and led to only one destination, prison.
This same jury last week convicted Woodard, 31, of murder in the deaths of DeKalb police officers Ricky Bryant Jr. and Eric Barker. Woodard shot the two officers Jan. 16, 2008, in the parking lot of a low-income apartment complex where they were working extra jobs. The jurors are now deciding his punishment — death, life in prison without the possibility of parole or life in prison with the possibility of parole once he’s served 30 years.
While Woodard said he shot the two officers because they were beating him, prosecutors said the defendant simply did not want to go back to prison, where he was facing life without parole if convicted of a fourth felony. Bryant and Barker were about to find a gun Woodard was not allowed to have, prosecutors said.
In their closing arguments, Woodard’s lawyers begged jurors to show mercy, but Chief Assistant District Attorney Don Geary said Woodard could not be redeemed.
“You’re looking at a morally and ethically bankrupt person,” Geary said. “He doesn’t want you to do to to him what he did on Jan. 16, 2008. Show him the same mercy he showed (Bryant and Barker). They did everything to protect us. Protect these officers.”
Barker, 33, and Bryant, 26, each were married fathers of four children, and they both fought in wars in the Middle East, Barker as a soldier and Bryant as a Marine. That night they were working extra jobs at the Glenwood Gardens Apartments in a high-crime area of south DeKalb.
They approached Woodard moments after he got into a friend’s car with beer he had just bought at a unit that sold it illegally, an apartment known as a “shot house.” According to testimony, the officers ordered Woodard from the car because he didn’t have an ID. Shots were then fired.
Despite Woodard’s claims of self-defense, Geary said, “He didn’t want to go back to jail.”
“You heard [about] crime after crime after crime, arrest after arrest after arrest,” Geary said, reminding the jury of Woodard’s criminal record. “This defendant didn’t change (after going to prison), and he started carrying a weapon. He’s not going to change. … The defendant is a career criminal. You know he’s violent.”
But Woodard’s lawyers said that was the only lifestyle he knew. From the day Woodard was born, it was common for him to see relatives fighting over food or drugs, stabbing or shooting each other. His mother and aunts worked as prostitutes. Several relatives were mentally ill and incapable of nurturing, the defense attorneys said.
Attorney Dwight Thomas said he was not excusing Woodard but explaining how he became a killer.
“Is he redemptive?” Thomas said. “I would say, ‘yes.’ ”
Thomas begged jurors to give Woodard a chance and sentence him to life without the possibility of parole.
“Mr. Woodard still has the blood of two human beings on his hands, and that’s something he will have to live with the rest of his life,” Thomas said. “Now [Geary] wants Mr. Woodard’s blood on your hands. … I’m asking you not to be savages. We are much better than that. … We’re here to ask you to let him live. He is not a monster.”
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