Trial in prison-guard death opens today

SCRANTON, Pa. — Opening statements are scheduled for today in federal court in the death-penalty trial of an inmate charged with killing a federal prison guard in Pennsylvania more than four years ago.

Jessie Con-ui, 40, is charged in the February 2013 stabbing death of corrections officer Eric Williams at the Canaan federal prison in Waymart. Williams, 34, was working in a housing unit at the prison when he was attacked. Con-ui, who was angry after the guard ordered a search of his cell the previous day, stabbed the victim more than 200 times, authorities say.

Prosecutors are expected to show jurors surveillance video that they say indicates the attack was premeditated. They say Con-ui stopped the attack to walk over to a shower, clean a cut on his hand and wrap it before continuing the assault. They say he also paused to chew a piece of gum he took from the dying guard’s pocket before returning to his cell.

Defense attorneys haven’t disputed that their client killed the victim, but they are opposing the death penalty. They say the stabbing was retaliation for mistreatment by guards, not the calculated slaying that prosecutors contend.

A judge ruled Friday that jurors can hear most, but not all, of the defendant’s statements reportedly made after the slaying. Officers who followed a bloody trail to Conui’s cell reported seeing him with a clear, plastic knife and asking him whether he killed Williams. They said he responded by saying, “Yes, disrespect issue.”

The judge said he will allow that and similar statements reportedly made inside the cell, but he blocked prosecutors from using a statement about the defendant’s demeanor as well as statements to a prison psychologist.

Should Con-ui be convicted of first-degree murder, the trial would move to a penalty phase in which jurors would decide whether he should spend life in prison or be executed.

Since the slaying, Con-ui has been at a super-maximum security prison in Colorado where he’s serving 25 years to life for a 2002 gang-initiation murder in Arizona.