I should we should pardon him ...
Posted on 12/11/2005 12:26:59 PM PST by doug from upland
CBSNEWS.COM Los Angeles Dec. 11, 2005
(AP) A lawyer for convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams asked the state Supreme Court to stay his execution, saying the Crips gang co-founder should have been allowed to argue that someone else killed one of his four alleged victims.
Attorney Verna Wefald filed a petition Saturday challenging the validity of the four convictions and death sentences given in 1981 to Williams, who is scheduled to die Tuesday at San Quentin State Prison. She also filed an emergency request seeking a stay, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Williams' lawyers also have asked Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency, saying Williams has redeemed himself as shown by his books urging children not to join gangs. Schwarzenegger's office said Saturday the governor had not made a decision.
Williams was convicted of killing a man during a robbery in February 1979 and of murdering a couple and their daughter at a South Los Angeles motel in March 1979.
Williams denies committing the murders but has apologized for co-founding the Crips, the gang blamed for numerous murders in Los Angeles and beyond.
From behind bars, Williams has been nominated five times for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to quell gang violence and four times for a Nobel Prize in literature.
In August, Williams received a President's Call to Service Award for his good deeds on death row, complete with a letter from President Bush praising him for demonstrating "the outstanding character of America."
The money from the sale of his books is used to support at-risk youth programs and to continue his appeals, his lawyers said.
Wefald's petition argues that prosecutors failed to disclose at trial that witness Alfred Coward was not a U.S. citizen and had a violent criminal history, depriving Williams of the opportunity to argue Coward was the killer in the February 1979 robbery.
Coward is now in prison in Canada for killing a man during a robbery.
"All of the witnesses who implicated Williams were criminals who were given significant incentives to testify against him and ongoing benefits for their testimony," Wefald wrote.
"This type of testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in murder and capital cases in the United States," she wrote, citing a study from Northwestern University Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions.
Wefald declined to comment Saturday night.
The California Supreme Court, a federal court judge in Los Angeles, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court have all upheld Williams' convictions
Maybe not 24 hours, but it certainly wouldn't be a week. Someone from the Bloods would go kill someone just to see him die.
Guess how many of his books have SOLD. One book sold 300 some copies, one book sold TWO copies. So much for his books.
There wont be any deal. And if there is, whats left of the reputation of our judicial system, laws and jury verdicts will be stood on it's head. There is absolutely no baisis for clemency in this case.
The death penalty was designed for ruthless murders, just like Stanley Williams.
PBAB - Pine Box at Bedside
Good point. Inflamatory posts tend to elicit responses as nonsencical as the orignal post. Waste of bandwith.
Burn Tookie, BURN!
Oh, puleeze! Her name was Karla Faye Tucker. She and her buds were flying high for several days. She decided to go over to some other ex-friends' home, use her old key to gain entry, kill them, rob them and steal the man's motorcycle. She took a pick ax to hack away at the man and woman and stated on tape later that she had orgasms with each strike of the ax. Sure, she later claimed she'd seen the light, married the prison chaplain and was deemed a model prisoner, but that doesn't bring back the couple she killed.
The media had a fine time hyping it all with the Christianity angle and that she was the first woman to be executed since the Civil War. She'd had 14 years behind bars to appeal to get her sentence commuted life. The evidence against her was so overwhelming and her actions were so heinous, her jury found her guilty the same day they were given the case. The Board of Pardons and Parole never recommended to Bush that she be stayed. Yes, the governor has the power to grant clemency but that would only give a 30 day extension of the inevitable. As for a full pardon, forget it. To my knowledge there's never been one granted in Texas. Bottom line, how the heck is it Bush's fault?
This 'reformed man' angle on Tookie sure has gotten legs. So he's a positive role model for kids, huh? His two known children are both convicted criminals. One for murder, the other for child rape/molestation. In 2000, he was taped in prison ordering the murder of a wayward Crip.
You hate to lose those kinds of pillars to society.
Tim for Tookie to go nighty night,,,,
What part of evil men will do good in an effort to save their own lives... escapes you?
What good can someone do while in prison for murder? The effort is pretty much limited to writing books and saying things the media reports.
Just imagine all those illiterate nner city gang members sitting down to read a good book between murders and rapes. Can't you imagine one saying to another, "I'll help you rob that liquer store just as soon as I finish this chapter I'm reading,"? Oh the delima of inner city toughs ... "Should I deal dope or read a good book?" How often do you think reading a book wins that contest?
Can't you imagine the inner city punks gathered aound a radio tuned to NPR to hear Nina Totenberg praise Tookie for condeming the gang life?
It's time for Tookie to take his punishment like a man.
In communist nations you can be a Christian but you have to follow a politically correct version. It is called "liberation theology." That is the media's Christianity and you would not recognize it unless you are a Methodist.
I like Galveston. I was born in Corpus.
For someone who has an opinion about this case, you certainly know very little about it. Sorry, not meaning to be catty and all, but still. Yes, indeed the glitterati were out there ranting and raving. She had everyone from Hollywood, to the talking heads, to US as well as foreign politicians, to church leaders including the Pope asking that her sentence be commuted to life --- oh my, but she's a woman!!!
I'm willing to believe she had perhaps turned away from the dark side and become a better person but the state executed her for her crimes, not for what she might or might not have become 14 years later. If in the end she made her peace, then good for her but that doesn't detract from what she did nor does it mean she should be let out of her punishment just because she was female. I've mentioned this before, I have the last doll she made in prison (the death row women used to make rag dolls to earn money). On 2-2-98, I was watching the news showing her being escorted from her cell when the prison called to say everything was being cleared out of her cell and the doll was being shipped. I was having second thoughts on the doll, but it's the cutest thing and doesn't have any bad vibes whatsoever. So see, I'm open to hoping she had some good in her, but that still doesn't bring back her victims.
"Tookie asks for emergency stay"
The clemency hearing with Arnold must not have gone well for Tookie. He's a convicted murderer. Fry him.
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