HOUSTON — A truck driver convicted for his role in the deadliest immigrant smuggling attempt in the US should not be sentenced to death because he is not the “worst of the worst,” his defence attorney told jurors yesterday.But prosecutors said Tyrone Williams, 35, a Jamaican citizen living in New York state, should be executed because he committed a deliberate act of violence in a depraved manner that resulted in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants trapped inside a sweltering tractor-trailer.

“The only justifiable punishment in this case should be death,” Assistant US Attorney Daniel Rodriguez said.

After a nearly month-long break due to the illness of an attorney and the holidays, the punishment phase in Williams’ retrial resumed yesterday with opening statements.

Williams was convicted on December 4 for his role in the May 2003 deaths of the illegal immigrants, who succumbed to the deadly heat in the back of his tractor-trailer as he was smuggling them from southern Texas to Houston.

Jurors now have to decide if Williams, who was convicted on all 58 counts of conspiracy, harbouring and transporting, should be sentenced to death or up to life in prison.

During his opening statement, Craig Washington, Williams’ lead attorney, told jurors his client never intended for the immigrants to die and continues to be remorseful about what happened.

Washington said other members of the smuggling ring Williams worked with were equally culpable for what happened, but none of them are facing a possible death sentence.

Washington said Williams can be rehabilitated and that his family, who was present in the courtroom, would be hurt by a death sentence.

But Rodriguez said Williams merits a death sentence because by not freeing the immigrants during the smuggling attempt, he intentionally committed an act of violence that put people at grave risk and caused their deaths.

Rodriguez said Williams’ actions were done in a heinous and cruel manner that also put in danger the lives of the other immigrants trapped inside his trailer. More than 70 immigrants were stuffed inside the trailer.

Nineteen of the immigrants died of dehydration, overheating and suffocation after spending nearly four hours inside the oven-like container. Williams abandoned the trailer at a truck stop in Victoria, about 100 miles southwest of Houston.

Family members of the 19 victims are expected to testify during the punishment phase.

Williams is the only one of 14 people charged in the case who is facing the death penalty. In 2005, a jury convicted Williams on 38 transporting counts, but he avoided a death sentence because the jury could not agree on his role in the smuggling attempt. The jury was deadlocked on the 20 other counts.

An appeals court granted Williams a new trial after his conviction in 2005 because the jury could not agree on his role in the smuggling attempt.