Zeno Williams will stay in prison for life.
That was the state Supreme Judicial Court’s decision on Thursday as justices rejected the Brockton woman’s claims that she got ineffective counsel from her lawyer in a 2005 trial for her role in the stabbing and strangulation of Stoughton cleaning business owner Manuel Andrade.
The court said “there is no reason” to throw out the Norfolk County Superior Court jury’s verdict in the 2002 killing.
Williams and her boyfriend, Jamaal Haith, also of Brockton, were convicted in the 2002 killing. Haith got a life sentence in 2004, and the court had already denied his appeal for a new trial. The court heard Williams’ appeal last year.
Williams was 20 at the time of the murder. Haith was 23.
Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating applauded the decision, saying he was “pleased and relieved for the Andrade family.”
“We felt that police had put together a strong case and that the jury had it right,” Keating said.
Williams’ appeal, which started in 2006, included two claims — that her defense was ineffective because her mother didn’t have the authority to let investigators search incriminating papers in the family’s basement, and that she suffered “battered woman’s syndrome” at the time of the murder.
But the high court said Williams had no right to privacy from the search at her mother’s home, and that it was clear the jury did know that she’d been repeatedly abused by Haith in the months before the murder.
Andrade was a 49-year-old Cape Verdean immigrant who ran M.A. Cleaning Service.
He’d lived in the area for 20 years, and was preparing to join his wife and four children in Florida when he was killed.
At the time, the family had already sold their Stoughton home, and Andrade was living in an apartment on Wheeler Circle until he could sell his business.
Williams and Haith sneaked into the building on Jan. 20, 2002, with Haith posing as a maintenance worker. They talked their way into Andrade’s apartment, stabbed him with a screwdriver, then strangled him with an electrical cord.
According to testimony in Haith’s trial, Andrade said, “Why are you doing this to me?” when he recognized Williams.
The pair stuffed Andrade’s bloody body into garbage bags, then took his credit cards, bus ticket receipts and other items.
During her trial, Williams claimed that she and Andrade were having an affair, and that Haith knocked her unconscious and killed Andrade with the help of a friend when Haith found them together.
Prosecutors painted a very different picture of Williams and Haith working together, then fleeing the state.