Posted on 12/04/2005 8:37:33 AM PST by SmithL
What the jury saw was a musclebound hulk in a 4X jacket. What they heard about was barbaric: two cold-blooded robbery murders within 12 days, four dead and a suspect who was said to laugh hysterically as he mimicked the gurgling last breaths of one victim.
Who they heard it from: an alleged accomplice granted immunity, a jailhouse informant, an acquaintance with a checkered criminal past, a friend who later claimed police beat him into testifying.
A police expert tied a shell casing from one crime scene to a slide-action 12-gauge shotgun owned by Stanley "Tookie" Williams, but there were no fingerprints, no pictures, no bystanders to finger him. And no DNA that could bolster or silence his claim of innocence.
A quarter-century later, the trial that landed the Crips gang co-founder on death row draws renewed focus as his Dec. 13 execution date nears. While his backers highlight his tale of atonement and anti-gang outreach from prison, debate over his 1981 prosecution is bound to play out in the Capitol on Thursday as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger entertains his case for clemency.
The state's lawyers will underscore the savagery of the crimes, his refusal to admit to them and the repeated rejections of his state and federal appeals. In response, lawyers for Williams likely will argue that the kind of "snitch" testimony relied upon in his trial has led to numerous exonerations, that the evidence was weak and appeals courts never really considered his innocence claim.
"What the federal courts have done is looked at a host of legal questions, such as whether Stanley Williams had inadequate representation, and questions about the jury," said Jonathan Harris, one of the lawyers who will speak for Williams.
"The question of Stanley Williams' guilt or innocence is not properly before them."
The state Supreme Court last week rejected Williams' bid for new ballistics tests and police records that they hoped would reignite his legal case.
The decision, on a 4-2 vote, leaves Williams hanging his hopes on clemency, which would commute his sentence to life without parole.
Unlike the clamor of celebrity and media attention over his plea for life, there was scant public interest in Williams' criminal trial, which started Jan. 21, 1981, and ended in a death sentence two months later.
At the time, a different Los Angeles capital case dominated the news: the trial of Lawrence Bittaker, a machinist who would join Williams on death row for kidnapping and slaying five teenage girls.
The Crips had yet to stamp their violent imprint on the national consciousness. If jurors knew about the street gang, they were never told Williams stood among its leaders. Nor did they hear from Williams, who remained silent during the trial, occasionally jotting on a yellow notepad.
The state's case went like this:
On Feb. 27, 1979, Williams smoked a cigarette laced with PCP and set out with three others, in two cars, to rob. After failed attempts on a restaurant and a liquor store, they drove to a Whittier 7-Eleven store, where Army veteran Albert Owens, 26, was sweeping the parking lot about 4 a.m.
An alleged accomplice, Alfred Coward, testified that Williams ordered Owens to walk to the back of the store, then lie down. He told the jury that Williams shot out the store's security monitor, then killed Owens with his shotgun, sawed off at the handle. The four men divided $120 among them.
The jury also heard testimony that Williams bragged of the March 11 early morning murders of three family members at the motel they ran on South Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles. The state said Williams broke the locks and smashed the molding on the door of the Brookhaven Motel, then shot Yen-I Yang, 76, his wife, Tsai-Shai Yang, 63, and their daughter, Ye-Chen Lin, 43.
There were no witnesses to the motel murders. A fourth family member, Robert Yang, awoke to gunshots but did not see Williams.
Coward was the state's lone eyewitness, testifying under immunity in the 7-Eleven murder. Another alleged accomplice, Tony Sims, never testified at Williams' trial. He received a life prison term for his role in the robbery-murder, in a separate trial during which he named Williams as the shooter. The third alleged accomplice, known only as "Darryl," also did not testify.
Robert Martin, the prosecutor, said he granted immunity to Coward because he was the least culpable and unarmed -- a claim scoffed at by Williams' lawyers, who cite a host of gun crimes on Coward's criminal record.
The jury knew of the immunity deal, but only portions of Coward's rap sheet, which included armed robbery and carrying a loaded firearm.
Williams' lawyers argue that prosecutors also failed to reveal that Coward was a Canadian citizen who may have given false testimony to avoid deportation. Coward is now serving time in a Canadian prison for robbery and manslaughter.
Police recovered Williams' shotgun two days after the motel murders. They said James Garrett, a con man, pulled it from under his bed. Williams often stayed at Garrett's house, and Garrett named Williams for the murders while police questioned Garrett about the killing of a crime partner.
Garrett testified that Williams bragged about the motel murders and also admitted to the 7-Eleven murder. Garrett's wife, Ester, also testified that she heard Williams confess to the murders.
The jury knew some of Garrett's questionable past, but were not told of any deals with him for leniency. Garrett, a career criminal credited with masterminding several armed robberies, would later receive probation for a variety of crimes, including extortion, over recommendations of jail time by his probation officer. He is now dead.
Robert Martin, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted Williams, insists he never struck a deal with Garrett.
"The only thing I told Garrett's attorney -- this is quite usual -- is that if his judge called me and asked if he gave honest, truthful testimony, I'd say yes," said Martin, now retired. "If ... the judge learns that he testified truthfully in a murder case, he's probably going to get some consideration."
Prosecutors are required to tell the defense about deals with witnesses. This one was unspoken, said Williams' attorney, Verna Wefald.
"It's important to understand how this winking and nodding goes on with informants and prosecutors," she said. "Nobody does this for nothing, and everybody knows how the game is played except the jury."
Wefald said police never investigated Garrett for the murders, despite his possession of the shotgun and his knowledge of what happened.
Samuel Colemen, a friend of Williams who was arrested with him, also testified under immunity that Williams admitted the crimes to him. Later, in 1994, Coleman signed a sworn affidavit saying police beat and intimidated him into his testimony. His current whereabouts are unclear.
George Oglesby, a jailhouse informant with a grimy, violent criminal record, told the jury that Williams bragged about the killings and plotted an escape, planning to explode a jail bus with Coward aboard.
Jurors saw notes and a sketch that Williams purportedly wrote in jail, plotting the escape. A handwriting expert testified that the writing matched Williams' penmanship.
A police firearms expert also testified that he positively matched a shell from the motel crime scene to Williams' shotgun -- testing that his attorneys call flimsy. Two shells recovered from the 7-Eleven were "consistent" with the shotgun, the expert said, but he could not make a positive match.
The defense attorney never had the weapon tested.
"It's all informants, and that shotgun," said Wefald. "The shotgun clearly looks like it was planted under Garrett's bed."
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected all of Williams' arguments about the witnesses who testified.
It found that Williams' trial attorney "effectively called into question the truthfulness of Oglesby's testimony through cross-examination." The panel found that Williams could not prove that Garrett secured anything more than a hope of leniency when he testified. And it held that, even if Coleman was beaten and coerced, the time between the beating in 1979 and the trial two years later was enough to make his testimony "sufficiently voluntary."
After his conviction, Williams' attorney chose not to present mitigating evidence, or any mental state defense, to avoid a death sentence. His appeals lawyers claimed Williams received unconstitutionally weak defense. The defense lawyer, Joe Ingber, says he made a calculated call.
"I had a dilemma. The prosecution chose not to include ... anything to do with gangs," said Ingber. Any mitigating evidence "might open the door to a lot of gang activity that hadn't been brought up in the guilt trial."
Asked what most swayed the jury, Ingber pointed to the figure he had fitted in a 4X jacket to keep his muscles from stretching the seams.
"His physical presence would have been ominous enough for me. You're sitting there, listening to four murders, a shotgun used to kill three people in a family, and you're looking at a person who looks very ominous. It's hard to be a little compassionate, except to the family."
Martin, the prosecutor, said the best evidence in the case "really came from Tookie himself. The fact he told Sam Coleman, the fact he told the Garretts and also his documents of the escape attempt."
The appeals court rejected Williams' claim that he was incompetent to stand trial. Recently, he said he was involuntarily drugged in jail while awaiting trial -- a claim that the state Supreme Court declined to entertain.
The trial record shows that Williams was barely responsive to questions from the judge.
In his memoir, "Blue Rage, Black Redemption," Williams devotes only a few sentences to his trial, writing that he "sleepwalked numbly through the majority of the ordeal." He describes that period as "an amnesiac episode that flew by with the speed of light."
Now, 24 years later, Williams can only hope that Schwarzenegger rewrites the ending.
1,001
Why not just let him go in Contra Costa?
Yeah, right..."errors" that didn't come up during the assloads of appeals that this jagov blew thousands upon thousands of tax dollars on.
For once, just once, I'd really like to see Schwarzenegger actually live up to his Hollywood "Terminator" image.
The author throws up scores of speculations why the testimony of criminals is probably manufactured lies. Most likely, the witnesses believed Williams stories that he is the killer, and they also feared he would just as soon kill them if they crossed him. I believe these criminals.
I dare anyone to put a few of these bumper stickers on their car and drive through South Central.
I think the punishment should fit the crime. I say Tookie should die the same way he killed his victims.
First, tell Tookie he's going to be spared. Then tell him to lie on the cold concrete floor. Then shoot him in the back with a shotgun. Twice. Then stand around and laugh as the bleeds to death.
That is what Tookie did to his victims. That is what he deserves.
lol
I'd do it for a million dollars plus a car full of U.S. Marines.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Vengeful S.O.B., ain't I?
If even the 9th Circuit can see through this, it's time to kill him.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Not even close. May God forgive me for this, but I could easily stretch that animal's execution over such a protracted period that the only clemency he would seek would be the mercy of the grave.
Williams has had 24 years to loft any evidence that his case was screwed up or that he was innocent. He has made appeal after appeal only to be shot down.
Nine days until justice flows through the veins of the co-founder of the Cipts.
I would that his victims and the victims of his organization had recieved 24 more years of appeals.
Pull the trigger, trip the trap door, flip the switch, start the injection, just terminate this brutal racist butcher.
Not really knowing anything about this case, I don't have any opinion on the clemency petition, but that so many FReepers anxiously anticipate dancing on a grave sickens me. The execution of a criminal is not a cause for celebration; it is an occasion for sadness that it ever had to come to that.
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