"Be well Tookie".
Posted on 11/20/2005 8:43:02 AM PST by SmithL
The crime photos tell a tale of shotgun brutality: the bloody torso of 7-Eleven clerk Albert Owens, shot twice in the back from close range; the blasted left side of Yee-Chen Lin's face; holes in Tsai-Shai's back and stomach; Yen-I Yang's mangled left arm, his spilling abdomen.
Testimonials from parents, teachers and educators tell a different story: redemption; atonement; untold young lives saved from virulent gang life through the words of a man sentenced to die for those four 1979 murders, a man who now waits to die by lethal injection in 23 days.
The competing portraits of Stanley "Tookie" Williams will face Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week as he weighs the nation's most high-profile clemency decision since the Texas Board of Pardons and then-Gov. George W. Bush refused to halt the 1998 execution of confessed killer Karla Faye Tucker.
In Williams, a founder of the notorious Crips street gang in Los Angeles, death penalty opponents see a strong test for a virtually extinct notion of clemency as an act of sheer mercy that looks past the court record.
In Schwarzenegger, they see a governor who has called for a renewed focus on rehabilitation in state prisons, hoping he will snap a 38-year string of clemency denials in California.
"He's going to increasingly see the overwhelming support for clemency in this case," said Lance Lindsey, executive director of San Francisco-based Death Penalty Focus. "Stan is really a case designed for clemency. He sticks out in hundreds of ways."
In particular, Williams is noted for a string of children's books that teach the dangers of gang life and for working from prison to curtail gang violence around the world. Those efforts have resulted in five nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and four nominations for the Nobel Prize for literature.
A decision to grant Williams clemency would be unique in the modern era of death penalty politics, scholars say. Not since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 has a governor granted clemency on the sole basis of atonement or good works from prison.
Whether clemency is granted or not, the decision promises a deeper look into Schwarzenegger's views on the death penalty, support for which has softened in California over the past decade. While in China this past week, the governor said he had not yet decided on Williams' petition.
"This is kind of the toughest thing to do when you're governor, because you're dealing with someone's life," he said. "And so I dread that situation, but it's something that's part of the job, and I have to do it."
Schwarzenegger has paroled life prisoners at a far higher rate than former Gov. Gray Davis, but he also has rejected the only two clemency petitions he's faced.
Donald Beardslee, executed in January, argued for clemency partly on a good prison record. "I expect no less," replied Schwarzenegger in his denial.
Kevin Cooper, whose execution was stayed under a court order, highlighted a conversion to faith and his mentorship of other prisoners. Schwarzenegger said those factors "do not diminish the cruelty and destruction he has inflicted on so many."
Supporters say Williams' atonement goes well beyond prison behavior, and his good work travels far past the walls of San Quentin State Prison.
Network news programs have spread his story of transformation from thug to peace-seeker, spotlighting his children's books and Nobel Peace Prize nominations and his mentoring of gang youths by phone from prison. Actor Jamie Foxx portrayed him in a cable TV movie aired last year.
As a former Crips leader, his "peace protocol" commands a rare credibility with gang-prone youths, his backers say. Clemency would commute his sentence to life in prison without parole. A living Williams, they insist, is worth more than a dead one.
Schwarzenegger should also weigh the violent legacy of the Crips, said David LaBahn, executive director of the California District Attorneys Association.
"When you look at the reign of terror ... how many lives have been absolutely ruined, how do you balance that?" said LaBahn. "It's like the guy who created the wildfire, now he's holding the garden hose to it, saying, 'I'm doing my share.'"
Although Williams has issued a public apology for the gang violence he helped spawn with the Crips, he maintains his innocence in the murders that sent him to death row.
Innocent or not, the claim "muddies the water" for mercy, said Elizabeth Rapaport, a University of New Mexico law professor who has studied the use of executive clemency.
"Unless his lack of guilt is establishable, you don't want just redemption. You want remorse," she said.
Williams' plea to Schwarzenegger largely ignores his innocence claim. It focuses instead on his anti-gang work, and a conception of clemency as "an act of grace," as defined by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall in 1833.
"This petition asks, if Stanley Williams does not merit clemency, what meaning does clemency retain in this state," it reads.
"There's no question if Stanley were to have said, 'I committed these crimes and I apologize for them,' that would have made clemency easier for him," said attorney Jonathan Harris, who wrote the petition. "I do think that's evidence of his strength, and of his character and of his innocence."
Williams claims his conviction was based on shoddy police work and false testimony by police informants and known criminals offered leniency for their testimony. He also argued in vain that his trial was marred by racially biased jury selection.
In a last-ditch appeal to the state Supreme Court, he seeks access to ballistics evidence, police records related to those who testified and evidence to show he was drugged while awaiting trial.
Prosecutors have sought to portray Williams as unrepentant. Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County District Attorney, responded to the clemency petition with handwritten notes and a map suggesting Williams plotted to escape jail and blow up a bus with dynamite while awaiting trial.
He also detailed a record of prison violence at San Quentin, echoing unusual comments by corrections officials that aim to cast doubt on Williams' avowed turnaround. The record ends about the time, 12 years ago, that Williams places his transformation while in solitary confinement.
The last California governor to grant clemency to a death row inmate was Ronald Reagan, in 1967, based on evidence that convicted killer Calvin Thomas had a history of brain damage.
Death row scholars note a dramatic political climate change from the early- and mid-20th century, when governors granted clemency in about one in four death row cases.
"The grounds of clemency in capital cases have narrowed. Almost the only one that's used now is error correction," said Austin Sarat, an Amherst College jurisprudence professor and author of "Mercy on Trial: What it means to stop an execution."
Outside of Illinois Gov. George Ryan's 2003 decision to clear death row of its 167 inmates because of pervasive questions of injustice, clemency is rare for condemned inmates. Mental illness concerns, doubts about guilt or questions of fairness are virtually the only rationales, said Sarat.
Granting clemency for Williams "would be appropriate in the traditional conception of clemency: 'Why should I do it? Because I want to,'" he said. "That's not some wild idea. That's the conception defended by the framers of the Constitution."
Governors are more likely to grant clemency when prosecutors, the trial judge or relatives of the victims support it. Even then, said Sarat, they often wait until they are about to leave office.
None of those factors will aid Williams.
Relatives of Owens want Williams dead. In an interview with the Times earlier this year, his stepmother, Lora Owens, vented frustration at Williams' growing celebrity.
"He's going to end up a martyr," said Owens, "but I'm not going to let him forget the name Albert Owens. That's the man he killed. That's the man he's going to die for."
The danger to Schwarzenegger's re-election bid is far from clear, political scholars said. He is unlikely to face a viable Republican challenger, and an attack from Democrats could backfire. Many view him as having a relatively free hand.
"It's very unlikely the Democrats would attack him over a clemency, because there are many people in the party who oppose the death penalty entirely," said Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College.
"The votes Schwarzenegger needs to win back over the next 51 weeks are going to come back for reasons other than clemency for Tookie Williams," said GOP consultant Dan Schnur.
Still, it's a polarizing issue fraught with peril, said Rapaport.
"He could use it in some way to reintegrate youth, to model a life turned around. It would be a fairly potent argument. On the other hand, you have the family crying for blood," she said.
"I think the best outcome for Arnie is if he could just make this thing go away."
Times archives
Fry him.
All of Hollyweird would love to see Tookie granted clemency.
He murdered four people. He is the weakest link.
Goodbye.
A compromise is in order. Mr. Williams should be allowed to take his own life.
The Nobel Prize ... and the nominees are ...
Q: Has X [name of person] been nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize?
A: Information about the nominations, investigations, and opinions concerning the award is kept secret for fifty years.
Q: Can I nominate someone for the Nobel Prize?
A: No, you cannot if you're not invited. Qualifications to nominate candidates vary somewhat among the different Nobel Prizes. To find out who has the right to submit proposals for an award, see information for each prize category:
| Physics | Chemistry | Medicine | Literature | Peace | Economics |
Some folks must of gotten "pretend" life sentences.
Schwarzenegger must be pretending that no one was really murdered.
I guess the only way to make liberals AND conservatives happy is if we allow Tookie to die by euphoric starvation.
He has lived 26 years after the murders. That's more than enough. If he has truly repented, he should be prepared to pay the price without complaining.
There is, of course, a heavily-biased selection process to award the Nobel Prizes. But there is no barrier whatsoever to the nomination of anyone for any such prize. But you would never know that from the press coverage.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column: "What If the French Had Pulled a 'Murtha' in 1781?"
No - you don't want him to die quickly/mercifully/etc. Hang him up by his joints in the sun and let him twitch for a few weeks first. Plus, all the salt water he can drink.
Would we be having this discussion if he were white?
Want to see son LA riots if he gets the juice?
Sorry to be cynical, just being realistic. They've build this murderer into another one of their idols.
"The last California governor to grant clemency to a death row inmate was Ronald Reagan, in 1967, based on evidence that convicted killer Calvin Thomas had a history of brain damage."
I totally disagree with ANY excuse for murdering someone. If you have brain damage, have been abused as a child, were teased in school, or have eaten only white bread your entire life - it matters not. What matters is: What exactly did you do? And then the next question is: What exactly are the consequences of that act?
Leave the person and all the excuses and human pity emotion out of justice. It has not place in law.
His "BOOK" was ghost-written by some mush for brains idiot-stick grandmother type. Imagine, you're writing a book and who would be best to give credit to?
She was on John and Ken the other afternoon. She had claimed that 150,000 potential gang members had been influenced by Tookie's book not to join.
The hosts asked how she knew this. She referred to over a hundred thousand emails. When that number became mushy itself, she got flustered, attacked the hosts who asked to see them and hung up.
These anti-death penalty subversives will stoop to anything to get vicious merciless killer's sentences reduced. If he would have been sentenced to life like these jackasses claim they want killers to be, she'd be working right now to get him released because of "his" good works.
Sympathy for violent killers is all I see here. Why do these jackasses always forget about the victims? If they weren't subversives, they'd have enough sympathy for all sides in this mess.
I call them subversives, because they are doing their damnedest to clog, breakdown and utterly destroy our system of justice.
If human-animals have to commit violent crimes, I've got a great group that they ought to get to know before they enter their careers. I seem to see a lot of volunteers.
After crimes of Tookies magnitude, it doesn't matter how sweet he has been lately in the joint.
The law calls for punishment for what you did, not reward for being a good convict.
if it were a white mom who drowned her 5 children one by one while the others waited in horror...the answer is yes
I would if I could, but the Nobel website has nixed that idea.
Q: Can I nominate someone for the Nobel Prize?
A: No, you cannot if you're not invited. Qualifications to nominate candidates vary somewhat among the different Nobel Prizes. To find out who has the right to submit proposals for an award, see information for each prize category:
| Physics | Chemistry | Medicine | Literature | Peace | Economics |
There is, of course, a heavily-biased selection process to award the Nobel Prizes.
That's for sure.
Screw compromise, he didn't offer any to his victims. Kill him.
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