Crips Founder Williams Denied Clemency

SAN FRANCISCO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the murderous Crips gang who awaited execution early Tuesday in a case that stirred debate over capital punishment and the possibility of redemption on death row. Williams, 51, is set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison after midnight for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.

Hollywood stars and death penalty opponents mounted a campaign to save his life, making him one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebres in decades. His supporters argued that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had made amends during more than two decades in prison by writing a memoir and children's books about the dangers of gangs.

Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.

Williams stands to become the 12th California condemned inmate executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a brief hiatus.

Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down a clerk in a convenience store holdup and a mother, father and daughter in a motel robbery weeks later. Williams claimed he was innocent.

The last time a California governor granted clemency was in 1967, when Ronald Reagan spared a mentally infirm killer.Schwarzenegger _ a Republican who has come under fire from members of his own party as too accommodating to liberals _ rejected clemency twice before during his two years in office.

Less than 12 hours before the execution was set to take place, the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals said it would not intervene because, among other things, there was no "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence."

In his last-ditch appeal, Williams claimed that he should have been allowed to argue at his trial that someone else killed one of the four victims, and that shoddy forensics connected him to the other killings.

Williams was convicted of killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at a Los Angeles motel the family owned, and Albert Owens, 26, a 7-Eleven clerk gunned down in Whittier.

Among the celebrities who took up Williams' cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in "Dead Man Walking"; Bianca Jagger; and former "M A S H" star Mike Farrell. During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.

"If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked, "what meaning does clemency retain in this state?"

The impending execution resulted in feverish preparations over the weekend by those on both sides of the debate, with the California Highway Patrol planning to tighten security outside the prison, where hundreds of protesters were expected.

A group of about three dozen death penalty protesters were joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson as they marched across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn Monday en route to the gates of San Quentin, where they were expected to rally with hundreds of people.

At least publicly, the person apparently least occupied with his fate seemed to be Williams himself.

"Me fearing what I'm facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me?" Williams said in a recent interview. "If it's my time to be executed, what's all the ranting and raving going to do?"

Well, what the article below says is that they are paralyzed so that they can't show pain as the lungs stop working. Then they are given the chemical that stops the heart.

I can't stand Tookie and live in the South Bay (a suburb of LA), so I'm planning for riots right on my own street. (Predominantely black) However, if I don't like my cats being euthanized like this, I surely don't like humans being euthanized like this. My point is the chemicals stop major organs and is now being considered as inhumane. Give me more information if someone has it to change my feeling that this is not humane....even for a monster like Tookie.

http://www.cdinet.demon.co.uk/lethalin.htm

April '97 - ".....Texas newspapers recently reported a freakish accident. A lady, while hospitalized, was accidentally injected with one of the three poisons used to kill prisoners in the state's death chamber. The horrible way she died, convulsing in pain and screaming that she was burning, shocked the readers. Efforts have been made to convince the public that lethal injection is a painless and humane way to kill human beings. This news report forces us to rethink that view.

"Lethal Injection is not humane nor "painless" as death penalty advocates claim. Potassium is a metallic inert chemical. Potassium chloride is the salt of potassium after it's reacted with hydrochloric acid. It's an essential mineral in small doses when ingested by eating bananas. It's essential to muscle tone and action. That's why people who become dehydrated from working in the sun too long have severe muscle cramps, because their electrolyte balance is thrown off by potassium loss. It's the first to go when one sweats profusely.

"In large doses, injected intravenously, it would burn and hurt horribly, because it's a salt and because it instantly throws off the chemical balance of the blood with which it comes into contact. It makes all muscles lock up in extreme contraction that would hurt unbearably. It wouldn't get to all muscles when a prisoner is being killed with it, however. Since the heart is a muscle and it pumps the blood -- the minute that massive dose of potassium salt hits the heart, one would be history and that would be as far as it would travel.

"In lethal injection, three chemicals are used to kill. First, sodium pentothal (its trade name) or thiopental sodium (its chemical name). Then one minute later they inject pavulon. One minute later the potassium chloride. Pentothal is a short acting barbituric acid (barbiturate used in anaesthesia) and is commonly called "truth serum" as it's used in narcoanalysis. It knocks one out. It's a hypnotic. Pavulon is a curare' derivative which locks up the lungs so one can't breathe.

"So, while the helpless man strapped to a gurney is knocked out by the thiopental and can't draw a breath because of the pavulon -- he certainly can't scream in pain when that burning potassium is injected and sends his heart into a crunching, excruciating cramp.

"Ah, but the woman in the article didn't have any thiopental or pavulon beforehand. It hurt so bad she sat up in bed and screamed, seizured violently, then died. But she wasn't strapped down to a gurney, either. The inmates they're killing would scream too, IF they were able. They'd sit up and scream, IF they weren't strapped down and if their lungs weren't seized by pavulon. But they do gasp. Every one of them has. It's all they can do.

"'It looked as if he just went to sleep' -- that's how it's designed to look, to make it more palatable to the observers and those who're doing it. While it looks that way, it certainly isn't that way for the inmate they're killing. Looks are deceiving!

"All three of these drugs are acidic with pH higher than 6. God only knows what chemical reactions occur as they're mixed together in one's bloodstream. It probably burns so terribly that one feels as if he's being injected with fire right out of hell......"

I remember getting that old sinking feeling about lethal injection after seeing "Dead Man Walking." They addressed the above facts about lethal injection in the movie.

The dedication of Williams’ book “Life in Prison” casts significant doubt on his personal redemption. This book was published in 1998, several years after Williams’ claimed redemptive experience. Specifically, the book is dedicated to “Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars.” The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders, including the killing of law enforcement.

Footnote: George Jackson was a militant activist and prison inmate who founded the violent Black Guerilla Family prison gang. Jackson was charged with the murder of a San Quentin correctional officer. In 1970, when Jackson was out to court in Marin County on the murder case, his brother stormed the courtroom with a machine gun, and along with Jackson and two other inmates, took a judge, the prosecutor and three others hostage in an escape attempt. Shooting broke out. The prosecutor was paralyzed from a police bullet, and the judge was killed by a close-range blast to his head when the shotgun taped to his throat was fired by one of Jackson’s accomplices. Jackson’s brother was also killed. Then, three days before trial was to begin in the correctional officer murder case, Jackson was gunned down in the upper yard at San Quentin Prison in another foiled escape attempt on a day of unparalleled violence in the prison that left three officers and three inmates dead in an earlier riot that reports indicate also involved Jackson.

Whoa!

More red flags... this guy is guilty as sin.

I have been following this case quite closely and was listening to Michael Medved at lunch. A former gang member was retelling several heartless tales of Tookie in the days of his "reign." The caller didn't identify himself, or where he works, but used to hang out with the crips on the Westside. Tookie controlled the West side, while his co-creator of the CRIPS controlled the Eastside. There was no South Central gangs at that time. It was West against East that feuded until Tookie and his rival leader paired up to combine the two gangs.

The crips controlled several High Schools and the bloods were borne to combat the crips.

The caller was at a party in early/mid 70's and Tookie showed up with his bodyguards. The party goers made a "Soul Train" line while chanting Took, Took, Took, Took. The caller said they treated him like a hero.

He also said there was an incident where a rival gang member was stopped in his car and forced to give up his car keys to CRIPS/Tookie. He took off running after giving his keys up, and Tookie told one of his henchmen to go get/chase him. The Henchman threw off his shoes, placed a knife in his mouth and ran full speed after the rival gang member to kill him.

The caller stated much about Tookie, and ended by saying that he has waited 33 years to see Tookie die. He said that Tookie was responsible for 100's and 100's of killings that he's not in jail for. He either did them himself, or ordered them.

Another caller stated that Tookie terrorized the neighborhoods for years. People were so afraid of him because he was so vicious.

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