Posted on 12/08/2005 6:41:11 PM PST by 1066AD
30 minutes with Arnie to plead for life or death of a gangster From Chris Ayres in Los Angeles
LAWYERS for Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the gangster facing imminent execution by lethal injection, delivered an eleventh-hour appeal for clemency to Arnold Schwarzenegger last night.
They were given 30 minutes to persuade the California Governor not that Williams, co-founder of the notorious Crips street gang, was innocent of the four murders for which he was convicted, but that he was a reformed character who now preaches non-violence from death row and deserves mercy.
The high-profile campaign to save Williams presents Mr Schwarzenegger, who has sent only one other prisoner to his death, with an acute dilemma.
It has won the backing of personalities ranging from Winnie Mandela to the Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx and the rapper Snoop Dogg, but is vigorously opposed by the family of the 7-Eleven store cashier who was one of Williams’s victims.
"We were allowed to say what we wanted to say," Peter Fleming, one of Williams’s lawyers, said after the hearing. Asked about the chances of clemency, he added: "I am still frightened to death."
The last California Governor to grant clemency was Ronald Reagan, Mr Schwarzenegger’s political hero, in 1967. None has held a clemency hearing since 1992. If the appeal fails, Williams would be the twelfth prisoner to be executed in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978.
Williams, 51, has never admitted guilt or expressed remorse for the four murders in 1979, and prosecutors were also being given 30 minutes to argue on behalf of his victims that he should be executed at 12.01am next Tuesday after eating his final meal at San Quentin State Prison.
Lora Owens, stepmother of Albert Owens — a 26-year-old Army veteran who was shot twice in the back during a robbery of the 7-Eleven convenience store where he worked — has urged the Governor to reject the clemency request.
During Williams’s trial, a witness said the man who founded the Crips in 1971 laughed manically after the killing, then bragged: "You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him."
"I think he [Williams] is the same cold-blooded killer that he was then," Ms Owens said recently. "I think the celebrities are just abusing their popularity, their access to the media. It could have been your child."
Mr Owens, the 7-Eleven worker, had two young daughters when he died. Rebecca Owens, who was 8 at the time of the murder and is now 35, spent most of her life thinking that the man who murdered her father had been convicted and executed. But in 2001, she learnt that Williams was alive and had been nominated for a Nobel prize.
Williams was also convicted of murdering Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang and Yu-Chin Yang Lin — three members of a family that owned a motel — during a separate robbery. Prosecutors said that Williams also bragged about these killings, calling the victims "Buddaheads". Yet Williams’s supporters including Snoop Dogg — a long-time Crips associate who was acquitted of murder in 1996 — say he has reformed. They also say there is no DNA evidence to prove his guilt with scientific certainty.
On death row, Williams has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize multiple times, co-authored a series of children’s books that preach against gang membership, and written a memoir entitled Blue Rage, Black Redemption, which renounces his Crips past. It was recently turned into an award-winning television movie starring Foxx.
The decision, expected perhaps as early as today, on whether to commute Williams’s sentence to life without imprisonment parole comes at an extraordinarily difficult time for Mr Schwarzenegger, who suffered a brutal political defeat last month when voters rejected his reform proposals.
TWO SIDES OF THE LAW
LA County District Attorney on Williams’s appeal for clemency:
“These murders were truly horrific. What man orders another human being to lie face down on the floor and then proceeds to shoot him two times in the back at close range with a shotgun?
What man later laughs when he tells his friends how the victim gurgled as he lay dying? Stanley Williams, the admitted co-founder of one of the most violent gangs in existence, is that man.
What man, days after shotgunning Albert Owens to death, forces his way into a motel and executes three members of a single family? Stanley Williams is that man.”
Williams’s apology (1997)
“Twenty-five years ago, when I created the Crips youth gang, I never imagined Crips membership would one day spread throughout California, would spread to much of the rest of the nation and to cities in South Africa, where Crips copycat gangs have formed. I also didn’t expect the Crips to end up ruining the lives of so many young people, especially young black men who have hurt other young black men.
So today I apologise to you all — the children of America and South Africa — who must cope every day with dangerous street gangs. I no longer participate in the so-called gangster lifestyle, and I deeply regret that I ever did . . . I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions.”
With any luck at all, that will be a very short time.
The DA only had 30 minutes too.
This slug murdered 4 people in cold blood.
He underwent due process and a fair trial.
Glad to see Tookie is a swell guy now. (though, I'm not buyin' it).
The sentence cannot be altered.
What's does he have to do for there to be reasonable evidence? Play with the corpses after he blows them away with his shotgun?
"I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions.”
Or until the Governor grants me clemency.
Well, which is it? Is he innocent of the four murders, or is he refromed?
If he did not commit the murders, then it should not matter that he now preaches non-violence.
If he did commit the murders, then it should not matter that he now preaches non-violence.
(In Ahnold voice) Tookie, you are terminated!! You won't be back! (I hope anyway)
Just heard on the news that AAAAAAhhhhhhrnold's decision could come as early as tomorrow. This man had better make the right choice!
Tick tick tick tick tick, buh bye tookie, so long.
Great men like MLK is killed and his legacy lives on. Killers like Williams get to plead over and over for his life.
There's something wrong with that.
What's for dinner, Tookie?
".....twelfth prisoner to be executed in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978."
maddeningly poignant.....the state with the absolute highest numbers of freaks on the street and on death row has only dispatched 12 in 28 years?
How will he rule???
Or did I miss something and he has already. . .
Don't listen to them, Arnold. Listen to the people who will be voting for you in the next election. Otherwise, they might not.
Only Arnold knows. . .
Depends on if he wants to be governor for another term or if he plans to return to Hollywood.
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