Free Republic

It was 1980, and Bryon Schletewitz was planning to take over his family's general store in Fresno so his parents could retire. Josephine Rocha was looking forward to being a high school senior and had taken a part-time job at the market to pay for her new car. Douglas White worked at the shop while going to college and hoped to start a real estate business with his mother someday. But on a warm evening that year, the three were shot to death as part of a revenge plot cooked up in a Folsom Prison cafeteria. The scheme's architect, Clarence...

The crime photos tell a tale of shotgun brutality: the bloody torso of 7-Eleven clerk Albert Owens, shot twice in the back from close range; the blasted left side of Yee-Chen Lin's face; holes in Tsai-Shai's back and stomach; Yen-I Yang's mangled left arm, his spilling abdomen. Testimonials from parents, teachers and educators tell a different story: redemption; atonement; untold young lives saved from virulent gang life through the words of a man sentenced to die for those four 1979 murders, a man who now waits to die by lethal injection in 23 days. The competing portraits of Stanley "Tookie"...

Condemned murderer Stanley Tookie Williams, an ex-gang leader who became an anti-gang crusader in prison, is a "cold-blooded killer'' who disavows "any responsibility for the brutal, destructive and murderous acts he committed'' and deserves to be executed Dec. 13, Los Angeles prosecutors said Thursday. Williams and his defenders say he is not the man he was when he was arrested for four killings in the Los Angeles area in 1979, and they are hoping that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will commute his sentence to life without parole. Williams has written nine books for children and youths since 1993, has taped anti-violence...

As Terri Schiavo's parents grew more resigned to their daughter's fate, a federal appeals court said it would consider a new hearing on whether to reinsert the feeding tube that kept the severely brain-damaged woman alive for 15 years. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (search) did not indicate when a decision could be expected. The court order late Tuesday night allowed Bob and Mary Schindler (search) to file the emergency appeal, even though the court had set a March 26 deadline for doing so.