Posted on 12/13/2005 4:25:09 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
SAN QUENTIN, Calif. — FOX News correspondent Adam Housley was one of 39 people who witnessed the Tuesday morning execution of Stanley Tookie Williams.
Williams was convicted in 1981 for gunning down convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven in Whittier, Calif., and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, as well as the couple's daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned. Williams claimed he was innocent, but witnesses at the trial said he boasted about the killings, saying, "You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him."
This is Housley's report of Tookie Williams' last minutes:
I have seen death before, but never actually witnessed a last breath. Tonight that changed.
Tonight I saw the deep breaths of nervousness, the breaths of annoyance when an IV couldn't be inserted easily ... and the last quick breaths of air as a man's chest went still. This man wasn't a friend, a member of my family, or even an acquaintance. This man was convicted of brutally murdering four innocent people and later bragging about how he watched their last breaths. Tonight I saw his.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
i would have been eating popcorn and cheering go injection go, rah rah rah.
Adios Tookie. Humanity is better off now that you're gone.
We should go back to hanging.
I still think these ought to be broadcast via Pay-Per-View with all proceeds goings to victim families or their designated funds.
Tookie never apologized or atoned for what he did.
Instead he spent 20 plus years trying to game the system.
Here is the history of a mass murderer who actually repented of his crimes, and chose to atone for them.
His name was Steven Renfro.
Steven's parents separated shortly after he was born and his father lost touch with both the mother and son for about 35 years. Steven's grandmother located Steven and reconciled him with with his father.
Steven was raised by his aunt, Rose Rutledge, near Marshall, Texas. He went to high school with Rick Berry, a Harrison County district attorney who later prosecuted Steven.
On August 25, 1996, after taking what he later told authorities were 70 doses of the tranquilizer Valium along with liquor, Steven put on camouflage clothing, blackened his face and armed himself with four guns including a military assault rifle and some 500 rounds of ammunition.
He shot and killed his live-in girlfriend, Rhena Fultner, 36, then Aunt Rose Rutledge, 63, who lived with them. Then he went to a nearby trailer home of an acquaintance, George Counts, 40, against whom he had a grudge, and fatally shot him, firing more than 150 rounds into Counts' mobile home.
When police arrived, he opened fire again, wounding Marshall police officer Dominic Pondant in the shoulder and turning his patrol car "into Swiss cheese," as authorities described it. Police were out gunned by Steven's .45 and .50 caliber handguns and an AR-15 rifle, but one of his weapons malfunctioned and officer Pondant was able to hit Steven.
He was convicted the following April and ended his trail by telling jurors he should be put to death. They agreed.
He asked that no appeals be pursued. At his execution, he apologized to the family members of the victims and said a prayer.
He was executed on February 9, 1998, after spending the second shortest time on Texas' death row.
The media and Hollywood celebrities were conspicuous by their absence.
Housley also mentioned that the guards said they were relieved he'd been executed because Tookie had the Crips making death threats against their (guards') families; the media reported nothing of course (since it wasn't covered in his children's books I presume)
I would prefer to be hung.
Tookie presented a danger to others even though his physical movements might have been controlled. As such a danger, his execution is justified. There was no way to silence his hate, anger, and unrepentant dishonesty, except in death.
If the state ever gets me for anything, I'd like a firing squad and a last cigarette. But for the amusement of the fans, I don't think you can beat a good hanging.
"We should go back to hanging.
I would prefer to be hung."
When hang means, as it generally does, "to suspend," then hung is the correct past-tense and past participial form of the verb: "Yesterday, I hung a picture on the wall"; "I have hung many pictures on many walls." When hang means "to put to death by hanging," however, hanged is the correct past-tense and past participial form: "We hanged the horse-thieving varmint yesterday"; "We've hanged nigh unto forty horse thieves this year." Given that hanging has become a fairly infrequent means to a fairly infrequent end, you might think that this is an unimportant distinction. But, because of a colloquial use of hung that we blush bright yellowish green to mention here, you can end up embarrassing yourself if you use hung as an adjective to describe a male historical figure executed by hanging. History records that John Billington was hanged at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1630; whether Mr. Billington was hung, history does not record.
"i would have been eating popcorn and cheering go injection go, rah rah rah."
No you wouldn't.
Neither would these others who have spoken in the same fashion in this thread.
Jesus said, (paraphrased) "as you do to the least of these you do the same unto me." Is there an argument that this man occupies the lowest rung on the ladder?
The law in the State of California called for the man to be put to death. Then we must follow the Law.
Your suggestion that you would enjoy this man being put to death "rah rah" while eating popcorn, is your own admission that you view life as cheaply as the man who committed the murders.
Not necessarily by the neck, I might add. But with aggravating circumstances of this case, suspension by the appendages appears to have been warranted.
Good, now let's put the rest of death row on the fast-track. It might actually become a more effective deterrent if these murderers only had 2 appeals, and then - out.
It was not a man, but a beast in human shape. Sometimes it could be confusing.
"i would have been eating popcorn and cheering go injection go, rah rah rah."
No you wouldn't.
whenever there's an execution in this country, it is not a happy day, twenty-six years for the victim's families to achieve an iota of peace is more cruel to the victim's families than what tookie received. like i posted in a previous ping, if you are a betting person is tookie in hell or heaven right now?
JMHO
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