Posted on 10/11/2005 4:29:14 PM PDT by calcowgirl
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The Supreme Court refused Tuesday to take the case of California death row inmate Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a founder of the Crips street gang whose later work for peace won him Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
Williams, who has been praised for his children's books and efforts to curtail youth gang violence, likely will be executed in December if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does not grant clemency. The 51-year-old former gang member claims Los Angeles County prosecutors violated his rights when they dismissed all potential black jurors.
Williams, who claims he is innocent, is in line to be one of three California condemned inmates to be executed within months. He was condemned for killing four people in 1981 and claims jailhouse informants fabricated testimony that he confessed to the murders.
"We feel very strongly that this is an appropriate case for clemency because of what Stan has accomplished," said Andrea Asaro, one of Williams' attorneys.
While in San Quentin State Prison, Williams has been nominated five times for a Nobel Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Prize for literature for his series of children's books and international peace efforts intended to curtail youth gang violence. His case reached the justices following a February decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court, as did the Supreme Court, refused to grant Williams another hearing based on his argument that prosecutors violated his rights when they dismissed all potential black jurors from hearing the case.
The San Francisco appellate court had suggested he was a good candidate for clemency. The judges cited the children's books he has written from prison, in addition to messages of peace he posts on the Internet.
The California Criminal Justice Legal Foundation is urging against clemency, and no California governor has granted clemency to a condemned murderer since Ronald Reagan spared the life of a severely brain-damaged killer in 1967.
"Perhaps now he will finally get the punishment that a jury unanimously agreed he deserved," said the group's president, Michael Rushford.
Schwarzenegger has rejected clemency for the first two condemned men asking to commute their sentences to life without parole. In Schwarzenegger's latest rejection in January, he said an inmate's model behavior in prison was not enough to sway him to grant mercy. That inmate, Donald Beardslee, was executed days later.
Williams and a high school buddy, Raymond Washington, started the Crips street gang in Los Angeles in 1971.
Williams was sentenced to death in 1981 for fatally shooting Albert Owens, a Whittier convenience store worker. He also was convicted of using a shotgun a few days later to kill two Los Angeles motel owners and their daughter during a robbery.
Last year, "Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story" aired on television, prompting thousands of e-mail messages to Williams from young gang members who said his life story helped them turn their lives around.
"Today is a shameful day in the history of American jurisprudence," said Barbara Becnel, a Williams confidant who edited Williams' nine children's books. "Today the U.S. Supreme Court has said in its ruling essentially that it is OK for a white prosecutor to kick all of the African Americans off of a jury."
The justices, meanwhile, on Tuesday also set aside legal challenges from California condemned inmate Michael Morales, now 45, who raped and killed a 17-year-old Lodi girl whose body as found beaten and stabbed in a nearby vineyard 24 years ago. Authorities are seeking a February execution for Morales.
Among other things, Morales challenged a jury's finding that the murder was committed while torturing the victim - which was the basis for the death sentence.
Last week, the justices also paved the way for the execution of Clarence Allen, a leader of a Fresno crime ring who ordered three killings from Folsom State Prison where he already was serving time for murder. Prosecutors are seeking a January execution for Allen.
The cases are Williams v. Brown, 04-10500; Morales v. Brown, 05-23; Allen v. Brown, 04-10556.
Many times, in order to catch and convict criminals, you have to rely of testimony of some very unsavory characters.
If you demand that there must be 100%, completely undeniable proof for every crime, you aren't ever going to convict most people who commit crimes of any kind.
Are you sure that you're on the right forum for you ? That bleeding heart is making a mess on the floor.
In every trial, lawyers are allowed to dismiss jurors. Why don't you know this?
Yes, you are supposed to be tried in front of a jury of your peers, so do you want gang members to only have jurors who are also gang members?
Hard to claim 'redemption' when he denies committing the murders.
Sounds like Mumia who won't actually say he's innocent and did not kill Daniel Faulkner, he just lets his worshippers invent his excuses and alibis for him.
At least Williams denies it. But he's still guilty and the only apology he's made is for damage he did to 'his race.' My guess is, he didn't care if he killed a white guy and some Asians. He still doesn't.
It will count the day internet messages bring back the dead.
"They gave a Nobel Peace Prize to Yassir Arafat. He deserved to fry, too."
I have the feeling that he is frying for all eternity where he is now.
Thanks. I guess I better move the Bartlett's to the computer desk next to the Bible and the Latin dictionary.
"In every trial, lawyers are allowed to dismiss jurors. Why don't you know this?"
My post argued that lawyers should not be allowed to dismiss jurors.
"Yes, you are supposed to be tried in front of a jury of your peers, so do you want gang members to only have jurors who are also gang members?"
Since we are all supposed to be created equal, I contend that any citizen is a peer of the defendant.
Now, since you obviously don't know anything at all about trials, juries, or voir dir ( sp? ), let me explain it to you.......
There is a thingy called voir dir ( which I'm really not certain how to spell ), which gives lawyers from BOTH SIDES, the right to dismiss ANY future juror, on their upcoming case. The reasoning behind this, is so that they can weed out people who have biases and/or something about them, which would prejudice their view of the case.
Sometimes, once juries are seated, one or more of the jurors express something or acts on such a way ( usually going alone to the scene of the crime, or doing something else that is ILLEGAL ) that once found out, they should and often do get them kicked off the jury. THAT'S WHY THERE ARE ALTERNATIVE JURORS PICKED !
Your post was dead wrong and uneducated. You really need to learn NOT to talk about things you neither know or understand anything at all about, which your last sentence proves beyond a shadow of a doubt. We aren't all "equal" at all.
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