Pa. high court upholds stay of execution

A man on death row will not be executed Wednesday, after the state's highest court denied the Philadelphia district attorney's request to an expedited decision on a petition seeking to overturn Gov. Wolf's temporary reprieve.

Terry Williams, 48, was sentenced to die in 1984 for the killing of Amos Norwood, a 56-year-old Germantown church volunteer.

In February, Wolf issued a temporary reprieve on all executions, saying he wanted to see the results of a long-delayed report on the state's death penalty first. In previous comments Wolf called the state's death penalty by lethal injection "ineffective, unjust, and expensive."

District Attorney Seth Williams argued in his unsuccessful challenge that Wolf was countermanding a jury's will and the state's laws with the order. The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to review Williams' petition, but not on an expedited basis.

"The Supreme Court will give us a briefing schedule and we'll continue to fight on behalf of our client," said Shawn Nolan, chief of the federal defender's death penalty unit in Philadelphia.

Terry Williams' attorneys argue that prosecutors withheld evidence that Norwood sexually abused teenage boys, including Williams, a former football star from Germantown.

There are 186 people on death row in Pennsylvania. The last execution occurred in 1999 with the death of torture-killer Gary M. Heidnik.