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
RIP, Albert.
Good. Since they'll all be in a group, it'll make it quicker for LE to round them up.
Castro has been nominated as well.
I lived in Corpus for a while when I was a kid. Having lived in just about everywhere, I like all of Texas the best.
- In a stunning development, the CA legislature, meeting in emergency session, dumps lethal injection and adopts the electric chair, both for future offenders and also those already queued for dispatch.
- All courts applaud and agree that it is time to get to work on the backlog. (This is a ~fantasy~, after all.)
- I win the lottery and am invited as a public witness to Tookie's roasting.
As they strap him into the chair, I am jumping up and down like a manic lunatic, pointing through the glass at Tookie and the chair and shrieking "In before the zot! In before the zot!"
Let's see. He was found guilty of killing 4 people, and was given the death sentence 24 YEARS AGO.
He has NOW finally admitted that he is a murderer -- this is new. Before now, he has maintained that he is innocent (along with most other death-row inmates).
In today's news, he admits in the request to stay his execution, that he killed ONLY 3 of the 4 people he was found GUILTY of killing. That someone else killed one of the four.
Okay, his death penalty should be administered for the THREE.
He has never admitted the murders.
I thought the article said that in his appeal, he claims someone else killed one of the victims.
Doesn't it follow that he is admitting killing 3 of them?
Stick him.....
We are reading it differently, but I can understand the confusion.
"You" took this too personally! I meant in general. Dismiss if you want to as is your right. "I" still think that people can do nice things despite doing really terrible things as well.
Join us over on the John and Ken Live Tookie Must Die thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1538718/posts
I don't think we will ever know this side of heaven. There are probably things we have all done that we have no idea helped someone else out. Maybe the books inspired a parent to get up and get out. You never know.
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