DENVER-
A man convicted of killing a fellow inmate and displaying his entrails should be spared execution because he has mental problems and was a good family man before going to prison, his attorney said Monday.
The death penalty phase of William Sablan’s trial began in U.S. District Court with the same jury that convicted him last week of first-degree murder.
Sablan, 42, and his cousin, Rudy Sablan, 37, are the first federal defendants in Colorado to face the death penalty since Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. They were charged with killing Joey Jesus Estrella Oct. 10, 1999, after a night of drinking homemade wine and fighting in the cell they shared at the federal penitentiary in Florence.
Rudy Sablan’s trial date hasn’t been set.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brenda Taylor told jurors that prosecutors will show that Sablan will continue to be dangerous if he remains in prison. She said Sablan has thrown coffee at a prison guard and threatened to kill security personnel.
Prosecutors said Rudy Sablan strangled Estrella with a headphone cord and that William Sablan used a prison-issue disposable razor to slash Estrella’s neck. An autopsy showed Estrella bled to death and that some of his organs were removed after he died.
Early in the trial, prosecutors showed jurors a videotape shot by prison guards after they saw the carnage inside the cell. The tape showed William Sablan holding up Estrella’s internal organs and making obscene gestures.
William Sablan, a native of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, has a criminal history dating to 1984 that includes convictions for holding a couple at knifepoint, attacking two men on a golf course and attempting to strangle a shop owner with a telephone cord. While in prison for the golf-course attack, he and other inmates “took over” the prison, holding a group of Chinese inmates hostage, according to court filings.
The penalty phase of the trial is expected to last three weeks.
