http://ktla.trb.com/news/ktla-torture-rape,0,5082858.storyNEW YORK -- An ex-convict was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the sadistic, 19-hour rape and torture of a Columbia University graduate student.
Robert Williams was convicted last month in Manhattan of attempted murder, rape, kidnapping and arson.
His actual sentence - 422 years - was pronounced by state Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman, who said that for the sake of public safety she doesn't ever want him to get out of prison.
The victim identified Williams in court while testifying about her agonizing April 2007 ordeal.
He scalded her with boiling water; tried to blind her with bleach; forced her to swallow fistfuls of painkillers; and ordered her to gouge out her eyes with scissors.
He also glued her lips shut and gagged her with duct tape before torching her apartment.
"This is a person who relishes and derives fun from inflicting extreme physical pain on another human being. He enjoys torturing," prosecutor Ann Prunty said at the sentencing.
Williams previously served eight years for attempted murder.
Defense attorney Arnold Levine said an appeal was planned and asked that Williams receive psychiatric treatment in prison. The defense had unsuccessfully tried to have him declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
Levine had asked Berkman to sentence Williams "in a way to give him hope of going home one day."
Replied the judge: "The defendant, by his own conduct, has forfeited any hope of liberty."
When the trial began June 5, Prunty told jurors that Williams had violated the victim "in every way imaginable - and in some ways unimaginable," then tried to finish her off by burning her alive. Tied up and left unconscious to die in the fire, the woman woke up and used the flames to burn through some of her restraints and escape.
Prunty credited the woman's intelligence and mental toughness with helping her survive. The judge agreed, saying: "Everyone who witnessed (the victim's) testimony in this courtroom had to be impressed by her bravery, her intelligence and her extraordinary grace."
The nearly three-week trial was unusual in that the defendant was in court just once for a few hours. He was forced to show up on the day the victim testified and pointed him out to the jury as her rapist and torturer.
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