Tookie Williams executed in California
Schwarzenegger refuses to spare life of gang founder
13/12/2005 - 07:59:24
Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to block the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, rejecting the notion that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had atoned for his crimes and found redemption on death row.
With the US Supreme Court rejecting his final appeal, Williams, 51, is set to die by injection at San Quentin Prison at 8:01 Irish time for murdering four people during two 1979 hold-ups.
Williams’ case became one of the nation’s biggest death-row cause celebres in decades. It set off a nationwide debate over the possibility of redemption on death row with Hollywood stars and capital punishment foes arguing that Williams had made amends by writing children’s books about the dangers of gangs.
But Schwarzenegger suggested yesterday that Williams’ supposed change of heart was not genuine, noting that the inmate had not owned up to his crimes or shown any real remorse for the countless killings committed by the Crips.
“Is Williams’ redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?” Schwarzenegger wrote less than 12 hours before the execution.
“Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”
Williams’ supporters were disappointed with the governor’s refusal to commute the death sentence to life in prison without parole.
“The governor’s 96-hour wait to give an answer was a cowardly act and was torturous,” said former “M*A*S*H” star Mike Farrell, a death penalty opponent.
“I would suggest that had he the courage of his convictions he could have gone over to San Quentin and met with Stanley Williams himself and made a determination rather than letting his staff legal adviser write this garbage.”
Williams stood to become the 12th person executed in California since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977.
He was condemned in 1981 for gunning down convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven in Whittier and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and the couple’s daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned. Williams claimed he was innocent.
Just before the governor announced his decision, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals denied Williams’ request for a reprieve, saying there was no “clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence.”
Later in the evening, additional last-ditch requests to halt the execution were rejected by the US Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit and Schwarzenegger.
Just three hours before Williams was scheduled to die, his lawyers sent the governor a second request for a stay, saying a fourth witness who could help prove his innocence had come forward. The governor denied that request as well.
The last California governor to grant clemency was Ronald Reagan, who spared a mentally infirm killer in 1967. Schwarzenegger – a Republican who has come under fire from members of his own party as too accommodating to liberals – rejected clemency twice before during his two years in office.
Singer Joan Baez arrived at the prison gate as night fell. She sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot on a small plywood stage set up just outside the gates.
A contingent of 40 people who had walked the approximately 25 miles from San Francisco arrived earlier at the prison holding signs calling for an end to “state-sponsored murder.”
Others drawn to the site of the pending execution said they wanted to honour the memory of Williams’ victims.
In denying clemency to Williams, Schwarzenegger said that the evidence of his guilt was “strong and compelling,” and he dismissed suggestions that the trial was unfair.
Schwarzenegger also pointed out the brutality of the crimes, noting that Williams allegedly said about one of the killings, “You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him.”
According to the governor’s account, Williams then made a growling noise and laughed for five to six minutes.
In addition, the governor noted that Williams dedicated his 1998 book “Life in Prison” to a list of figures that included the black militant George Jackson - “a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems.”
Schwarzenegger also noted that there is “little mention or atonement in his writings and his plea for clemency of the countless murders committed by the Crips following the lifestyle Williams once espoused. The senseless killing that has ruined many families, particularly in African-American communities, in the name of the Crips and gang warfare is a tragedy of our modern culture.”
Williams and a friend founded the Crips in Los Angeles in 1971. Authorities say it is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.
Among the celebrities who took up Williams’ cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in Dead Man Walking; and Bianca Jagger.
During Williams’ 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.
“If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency,” defence attorney Peter Fleming asked, “what meaning does clemency retain in this state?”
Williams was moved to a “death watch cell” at around 4am GMT. Corrections Department spokeswoman Elaine Jennings described him as “co-operative and calm.”
Supporters and members of his legal team met with Williams before Schwarzenegger’s decision was announced.
The Rev Jesse Jackson, who joined death penalty opponents marching to the prison across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn, was seen leaving San Quentin.
The California Highway Patrol tightened security outside the prison, where hundreds of people were expected to rally.
At least publicly, the person apparently least occupied with his fate seemed to be Williams himself.
“Me fearing what I’m facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me?” Williams said in a recent interview. “If it’s my time to be executed, what’s all the ranting and raving going to do?”
Nothing to do with Tookie; article on Texas and death penalty
From today's New York Times
Rushing to Execute in Texas
The Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded, and Marvin Lee Wilson appears to fall into that category. But Mr. Wilson, who is on Texas' death row, may be executed anyway, because his lawyer missed a deadline, and the federal appeals court that rejected his claim last week is blind to the injustice of what is happening. Mr. Wilson's execution should be blocked. Beyond that, his case should cause Congress to stop its reckless campaign to make it even easier than it is now to carry out executions.
Mr. Wilson, whose I.Q. was measured at 61, appears to meet the legal standard for mental retardation. The Constitution therefore prohibits him from being put to death. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit does not seem to care. It ruled last week that because his lawyer filed his legal papers late, he has forfeited his right to object.
It is easy to see how Mr. Wilson's lawyer made a mistake. The morass of rules that have developed for when death row inmates must file papers in different state and federal courts makes occasional errors inevitable. Whatever the skills of Mr. Wilson's lawyer, the system as a whole is filled with overburdened, unenergetic and incompetent lawyers, as the Texas Defender Service documented in a report entitled "Lethal Indifference."
It is the courts' job to ensure that inadequate lawyering does not lead to people who are not eligible for the death penalty, like Mr. Wilson, being executed. But the Fifth Circuit did not even bother to address his most critical claim: that a federal law about how cases are to be handled should not trump the Supreme Court's determination that the Constitution does not permit a whole class of people to be put to death.
If a lawyer's slip-up can lead to the execution of someone who is exempt from capital punishment, the American justice system is diminished. Republicans in Congress are pushing for passage of the Streamlined Procedures Act, a bad law that would make it even more likely that mistakes are made in administering capital punishment. Congress should drop that bill and fix the flaws in the current system that allow Mr. Wilson to be headed toward an execution for which he is constitutionally ineligible.
