Gang Founder Claimed Innocence Until the End (Alternate Title- "Tookie Refused to Confess")

Yahoo ^ | 12/13/05

[Mr. Brightside]

Gang Founder Claimed Innocence Until the End

By KIM CURTIS, Associated Press Writer Tue Dec 13,11:26 AM ET

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. - Stanley Tookie Williams maintained his innocence right up until his death, even when an admission of guilt may have spared him execution.

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Even after the courts and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a flurry of Williams' last-ditch appeals before his execution early Tuesday, his supporters vowed to prove his innocence.

Williams, the Crips gang co-founder whose case stirred a national debate about capital punishment versus the possibility of redemption, was executed Tuesday morning for killing four people in 1979.

Williams, 51, died at 12:35 a.m. Officials at San Quentin State Prison seemed to have trouble injecting the lethal mixture into his muscular arm. As they struggled to find a vein, Williams looked up repeatedly and appeared frustrated, shaking his head at supporters and other witnesses.

"You doing that right?" it sounded as if he asked one of the men with a needle.

After he was declared dead, his supporters shouted in unison: "The state of California just killed an innocent man," as they walked out of the chamber.

Lora Owens, stepmother of one of the four people Williams was convicted of killing witnessed the execution. "I believe it was a just punishment long overdue," she told ABC's "Good Morning America."

Williams' case became one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebres in decades, with Hollywood stars and capital punishment foes arguing that Williams' sentence should be commuted to life in prison because he had made amends by writing children's books about the dangers of gangs and violence.

His execution also drew fierce criticism in Europe, where politicians in Schwarzenegger's native Austria called for his name to be removed from a sports stadium in his hometown.

"Schwarzenegger has a lot of muscles, but apparently not much heart," said Julien Dray, spokesman for the Socialist Party in France, where the death penalty was abolished in 1981.

Williams became the 12th person executed in California since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977.

In the days leading up to the execution, state and federal courts refused to reopen his case. Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied Williams' request for clemency, suggesting that his supposed change of heart was not genuine because he had not shown any real remorse for the killings committed by the Crips.

"Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?" Schwarzenegger wrote. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption."

Schwarzenegger said the evidence of Williams' guilt was "strong and compelling." Witnesses at Williams' trial said he boasted about the killings, saying: "You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him."

Williams 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.

Williams was led into the death chamber at midnight, shackled and handcuffed. He declined to give a formal final statement.

He seemed frustrated by the length of time it took officials to insert the intravenous lines in his arms. He repeatedly looked up, shaking his head at supporters, reporters and other witnesses whom officials did not identify.

In all, it took nearly a half-hour to prepare Williams for execution. It took much less time to die; he appeared to stop breathing just moments after a prison official read the death warrant and said, "The execution shall now proceed."

Williams was described as "complacent, quiet and thoughtful," by Corrections Department spokeswoman Terry Thornton in the hours before the execution. He declined to have a last meal as he waited in the holding cell, drinking milk instead. Prison officials said he spent his last hours reading mail, watching television and visiting with his lawyers and friends.

After watching her longtime friend die, Barbara Becnel told the crowd of hundreds gathered outside prison gates that she would prove Williams' innocence and that Schwarzenegger was a "cold-blooded murderer."

She said Williams "was brave and strong and he was everything we believed him to be."

Singer Joan Baez, M A S H actor Mike Farrell and the Rev. Jesse Jackson were among the celebrities who protested the execution.

"Tonight is planned, efficient, calculated, antiseptic, cold-blooded murder and I think everyone who is here is here to try to enlist the morality and soul of this country," said Baez, who 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 held signs calling for an end to "state-sponsored murder." But others, including Debbie Lynch, 52, of Milpitas, said they wanted to honor the victims.

"If he admitted to it, the governor might have had a reason to spare his life," Lynch said.

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.

Williams founded the Crips gang with a friend in 1971 and managed stay out of trouble for years despite his claims that he was a drug-fueled thug who robbed, beat and shot at people.

Authorities say the gang is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.

Whatever luck Williams found on the streets avoiding the law ended in 1979 after four people were killed in a pair of armed robberies that were connected to him and his pump-action shotgun.

Williams never wavered from his claim of innocence and said he refused to confess to crimes he did not commit, even if doing so would save his life. He said he redeemed himself while in prison and apologized for starting the Crips.

"There is no part of me that existed then that exists now," Williams said recently during several hours of interviews with The Associated Press. He said that while he wanted to live and continue his work with children, he was prepared to die.

"I haven't had a lot of joy in my life. But in here," he says, pointing to his heart, "I'm happy. I am peaceful in here. I am joyful in here."

[manwiththehands]

Libs seem to love the worst of us. The slimier and more violent the better.

[Begin]

I found this little gem from www.algorelabs.com:

Jesse Jackson: Tookie and Mookie

Good evening internet users and abusers. I'm here in a missionary position to urge you to write to your local U.N. Representative to try to get Stanley "Tookie" Williams released from San Quentin State Prison's death row. Tookie is no monster. Cookie is a monster. Mookie is a monster. But not Tookie, No Siree. With my fellow campaigner, Bianca "Kookie" Jagger, I trying to get Tookie released, not fleeced or deceased. He's being persecuted, electrocuted, and executed, just because he was a founder, left to flounder, of the Crypts street gang bang. I am this Crypt's keeper, and he just had bad lawyers, like Tom Sawyer, and Big Jim, sent down a river boat to hang, as he sang, Mr. Bojangles, isosceles triangles.

[ichabod1]

Alternate, Alternate title: Tookie Refuses to Die Yellow.

[billhilly]

It seems that whats left of the 60s looney left was there to do what they do. With one notble exception. Saddam will hopefully be next, then Ramsey Clark will be able to attend.

[LOC1]

Tookie never apologized or atoned for what he did.

Instead he spent 20 plus years trying to game the system.

Here is the history of a mass murderer who actually repented of his crimes, and chose to atone for them.

His name was Steven Renfro.

Steven's parents separated shortly after he was born and his father lost touch with both the mother and son for about 35 years. Steven's grandmother located Steven and reconciled him with with his father.

Steven was raised by his aunt, Rose Rutledge, near Marshall, Texas. He went to high school with Rick Berry, a Harrison County district attorney who later prosecuted Steven.

On August 25, 1996, after taking what he later told authorities were 70 doses of the tranquilizer Valium along with liquor, Steven put on camouflage clothing, blackened his face and armed himself with four guns including a military assault rifle and some 500 rounds of ammunition.

He shot and killed his live-in girlfriend, Rhena Fultner, 36, then Aunt Rose Rutledge, 63, who lived with them. Then he went to a nearby trailer home of an acquaintance, George Counts, 40, against whom he had a grudge, and fatally shot him, firing more than 150 rounds into Counts' mobile home.

When police arrived, he opened fire again, wounding Marshall police officer Dominic Pondant in the shoulder and turning his patrol car "into Swiss cheese," as authorities described it. Police were out gunned by Steven's .45 and .50 caliber handguns and an AR-15 rifle, but one of his weapons malfunctioned and officer Pondant was able to hit Steven.

He was convicted the following April and ended his trail by telling jurors he should be put to death. They agreed.

He asked that no appeals be pursued. At his execution, he apologized to the family members of the victims and said a prayer.

He was executed on February 9, 1998, after spending the second shortest time on Texas' death row.

The media and Hollywood celebrities were conspicuous by their absence.

[stinkerpot65]

As a Texan, I resent California stealing our death penatly cred. We snuff more scumbags in a week that California in a decade.

This is unfair to Texas.

Altogether now ... No Justice! No Peace! No Justice! No Peace!

[BenLurkin]

Sounds like the Manson family.

[BenLurkin]

It is possible:

"After Williams blasted a football-sized hole in Albert Owens' back as he lay face-down on the floor of the 7-Eleven where he worked, the gang leader laughed about the "gurgling" noises the 26-year-old divorced father of two made as he died, according to trial testimony.

"And after Williams gunned down Yen-I Yang, 76, his wife, Tsai-Shai, 63, and their daughter, Yee-Chen Lin, 43, when he robbed their family-run motel, he bragged of killing "Buddha-heads," according to his pals' testimony."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/story/369269p-314207c.html

[Frank_2001]

Wait nine months; there may be a crop of junior lefties named "Tookie";)

[johnny7]

“Who?! Wha... ??!” -Ed Asner, 12:35 AM, 12/13/2005

[Chode]

s'ok Tookus... the Devil LIKES them UNrepentant!!! 8^)

[taxed2death]

The only thing to do now is to locate his burial site and properly um.......fertilize it....heheheheheheh.

[taxed2death]

"And after Williams gunned down Yen-I Yang, 76, his wife, Tsai-Shai, 63, and their daughter, Yee-Chen Lin, 43, when he robbed their family-run motel, he bragged of killing "Buddha-heads," according to his pals' testimony."

You can find the pics of these three on the web. The sight of the young lady with the shot-gun hole and pellet pattern in her face will make you gag for sure.

I hope Stanley's soul rots in hell forever.

[stacytec]

Reading that makes me want to implement a wood chipper death sentence.

[PMCarey]

"You doing that right?" it sounded as if he asked one of the men with a needle.

... cause I know all 'bout murdering people. And I don't think you're doing that right." continued Tookie

[DaiHuy]

"I'll bet Tookie doesn't vote for the Terminator next year."

No he probably won't, but I wouldn't be suprised if he didn't vote several times for many different democrats across the nation.

[TheGunny]

Do you confesssssss? (voice of executioner in Brave Heart)

[vetvetdoug]

The NAACP will be right in the forefront of honoring Tookie. About ten years ago here in Mississippi, the NAACP honored a member of the last name of Holmes who raped and sodomized a 12 year old. Hooks, who embezzled the NAACP into bankruptcy, has a elementary school named after him in Memphis in his honor. Tookie will be on the T-shirts of FUBU within the next year.

[WasDougsLamb]

Stanley Tookie Williams maintained his innocence right up until his death, even when an admission of guilt may have spared him execution.


---Mixed blessing then. He would still be alive if he admitted he did it (just to stay alive) but still had no remorse and continued his bulls**t behind bars costing taxpayers money to support him the rest of his life while his victims lay in their graves? No, I am glad he kept his arrogant mouth shut. It made it easier for the victims families to be done with it. And they are all I care about.

[woofer]

Took, Took, Tookie don't cry.
Took, Took, Tookie Goodbye!

Rot in hell, you murderin' mutha.