Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis told the court today the state filed notice that it will seek the death penalty against Jermaine Williams, the 52-year-old Bunnell resident who stabbed his wife Yolonda Williams to death outside their home on Pine Street the morning of Aug. 2, as one of the couple’s sons, 14 at the time, tried to intervene and implored his father to stop.
Jermaine Williams appeared in court for a pre-trial hearing today before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols, with his attorney, Scott Westbrook. “It’s a death penalty case, so the court’s aware,” Lewis told Nichols. It would be the first time that the state has sought death in a case involving a Flagler County resident since 2007, when the state pursued–and eventually won–two death penalty cases, only for both sentences to be commuted to life in prison.
Williams appeared relaxed and undisturbed by his prospect, at one point conversing with his attorney and smiling broadly. There is a brazenness about him, unabated since his last incarceration: soon after he was jailed, he attempted to contact his children and other members of Yolonda’s family, according to court papers, “causing undue stress on many members of the family,” according to the prosecution. The state sought and got a no-contact order that applies to eight people–six adults and two minors.
The court file includes all eight names on the no-contact list, with Jermaine Williams’s signature at the foot of the page, certifying that “I have read and understand the above order.” The state may not be not eager for a trial–not because it doesn’t have overwhelming evidence, but because the trial would likely again traumatize family members.
The attack, brutal and merciless, was entirely captured on video from different angles, including Ring-type video from the house directly across the street and surveillance video from a city camera. The state also has in its possession 185 autopsy photos of the victim, and 43 hospital photos, some of which it would be prepared to show the jury, plus hundreds of additional images of assorted evidence.
All of it would be part of the evidence the prosecution may use in its case against Williams, if he does not plead out. The state’s evidence also includes witnesses to the attack, including Williams’s father. Lewis said the case includes a list of about 100 witnesses, though a large portion of those are law enforcement personnel. But all the witnesses still have to be deposed. Three days of depositions have been scheduled for January.
A plea would almost certainly result in life in prison, but not death. But Williams has known since late September that he is facing execution if convicted. There were no signals today either from the defense or the prosecution that any sort of negotiated plea was possible. It will be several months before the case moves ahead. “There are depositions that are in the process of being scheduled, and the state wouldn’t object to a continuance as far out as maybe March,” Westbrook said.
Jermaine Williams was on probation for domestic battery, false imprisonment and tampering with a witness before he was charged with the new crimes. A grand jury indicted him for capital murder on Aug. 21. The previous case is still active, since he violated his probation. The judge set Feb. 19 as the next pre-trial.
Seventeen years ago William “Billy” Gregory was indicted for the murder of his former girlfriend, Skyler Meekins, and her boyfriend, Dan Dyer in Flagler Beach. Gregory was sentenced to die but his sentenced was commuted to life in 2017. The same thing happened to Cornelius Baker, who was convicted of murdering Elizabeth Uptagrafft in Flagler County woods in January 2007 and sentenced to die, only to have his sentence commuted
Louis Gaskin is the only man convicted in Flagler County to have been executed since 1973, and may be the only execution in the county’s history. He was convicted of the two murders of Robert and Georgette Sturmfels in December 1989, and killed by lethal injection at the state prison in Starke in April 2023.
