Carolyn Bunch said she would like to see the man who kidnapped, raped and murdered her daughter Aleta 14 years ago get the death penalty. ``She would've been 30 in December,'' Mrs. Bunch said. The killer, Alexander E. Williams, awaits execution. JENNIFER BRUNO/STAFF

Mother seeks long-awaited justice

Web posted July 10, 2000

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By Sandy Hodson
Staff Writer

It's been so long.

Aleta Bunch now has been buried almost as long as she lived. Alexander E. Williams IV has been locked up on Georgia's death row almost half his life.

Thursday morning, Carolyn Bunch will attend yet another court hearing for Mr. Williams, the man convicted and sentenced to die for the March 4, 1986, kidnapping, rape, robbery and murder of her 16-year-old daughter.

Mrs. Bunch is grateful that at least she knows about this hearing, scheduled to be held at the prison in Jackson, Ga., where the state's death row is located. For a number of years, Mrs. Bunch learned about developments in Mr. Williams' appeals only by hearing or reading news accounts after the fact.

Fourteen years have passed since a Richmond County Superior Court jury convicted Mr. Williams, then 18, and sentenced him to die.

``I don't ever forget about it,'' Mrs. Bunch said.

The 14 years sometimes seem 14 minutes, Mrs. Bunch said. Aleta's boss at her after-school job called. Aleta hadn't shown up for work. No one who knew Aleta doubted that something terrible had happened, Mrs. Bunch said. Aleta, the joy of Carolyn and Fred Bunch's lives, was last seen at Regency Mall.

Within six months, Mr. Williams was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. During the years, his and Aleta's names dropped from public view, remembered only by a number of friends and family members, and in Mr. Williams' case, a few attorneys who have generated boxes of information in an effort to spare him from execution.

``You know, most people don't want to talk about it,'' Mrs. Bunch said.

But she cannot and does not want to forget.

``You look around here and anything reminds you of Aleta. She always sat right there,'' Mrs. Bunch said, waving toward a chair in the corner of the family room. She still can see Aleta, telephone in one hand and schoolbooks on her lap as she gabbed with friends while doing her homework.

She would have turned 30 last December.

Mr. Williams, 17 years old when Aleta was murdered, turned 32 in March.

Attempts to locate Mr. Williams' family were unsuccessful last week.

The years are marked in many ways. Mrs. Bunch's son was killed in a car accident in 1994, and the Bunches adopted his youngest son, Jamie, born in August 1986, as Mr. Williams stood trial. In September, Mrs. Bunch's husband of nearly 32 years died.

``That was one thing he really wanted, to see that boy punished for what he did,'' Mrs. Bunch said of her husband. ``He wanted to live long enough to see that man pay for it.''

Mr. Williams' execution is one thing his three attorneys have struggled over the years to prevent. They discovered medical evidence to show Mr. Williams is, and was in 1986, a schizophrenic. They obtained sworn statements from family members that show Mr. Williams was physically and sexually abused and neglected as a child.

The Atlanta attorneys, some of the few lawyers in Georgia willing to take on the years of work required in death sentence appeals, have tried and failed during the past decade to convince judges that Mr. Williams' attorney at his Richmond County Superior Court trial ``made a mockery of due process .ƒ.ƒ. and the concept of advocacy.''

The trial attorney, O.C. Collins, repeatedly through the trial dwelled on questions of who was black and who was white and young black men with white girlfriends, according to the trial transcript. Mr. Williams is black; Aleta was white. Mr. Collins later testified during a court hearing that he interviewed only five of the 44 prosecution witnesses.

He did not learn, Mr. Williams' appellate attorneys wrote, that two of Mr. Williams' friends who testified against him had been accused of rape themselves. In his closing arguments to the jury in 1986, Mr. Collins said, ``I think he (the judge in giving jury instructions) will tell you in reference to rape only, that you can't rape a dead body.''

Whatever Mr. Williams' appellate attorneys have alleged, however, has fallen in a deep void of court rules: The adequacy of Mr. Williams' defense attorney at trial was not a matter for review because it had been an issue litigated years ago and was closed.

Once, in 1996, 10 years after Mr. Williams' trial, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals offered his attorneys a glimmer of hope. The court sent Mr. Williams' case back to U.S. District Chief Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr., ruling the judge should have considered the new evidence the appellate attorneys discovered about Mr. Williams' mental illness and history of child abuse.

Judge Bowen did. And in August 1997, he denied Mr. Williams' appeal. Another two years passed before the federal appeals court agreed with Judge Bowen's decision. And in June 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mr. Williams' request to appeal further.

It was his last significant chance at escaping execution - although on the day the country's highest court announced its decision, Mr. Williams' attorneys filed a last-ditch effort: another appeal in state court.

A judge will hear that petition Thursday at the prison in Jackson. Mrs. Bunch will drive over from her Beech Island home. Three family members insist they will accompany her, although she thinks they are being overly protective. But in years past, Mr. Bunch had been by her side in the various courtrooms.

``Fourteen years,'' Mrs. Bunch said last week, shaking her head. ``Why is it that the good always die and then others won't?

``I think I'll have some closure,'' Mrs. Bunch said of Mr. Williams' execution. ``I think then I could go over to the cemetery and I could say it's over and know a little bit of peace.''

Reach Sandy Hodson at (706) 823-3226.