Oct. 24 OHIO: Williams set to die tomorrow When Willie "Flip'' Williams was let out of a California prison on narcotics charges, he returned to his hometown and stopped at the police department, informing anyone who would listen that he had changed from his evil ways. Williams, who is set to be executed Tuesday for a quadruple homicide at an East Side home in 1991, had stopped at the police station and told then-Chief Randall Wellington and other high-ranking members of the department that he would preach the anti-drug message to anyone who would listen. In fact, he even asked police to tell him who was in charge of the local drug trade so he could talk to them personally. One of the detectives who led the charge to have the 54-year-old Williams put on death row, Youngs-town Detective Sgt. William Blanchard, last week chuckled at the memory of Williams' offer. The detective said the move was not as benign as someone not experienced in crime would think. "He was trying to get his intelligence off of us," said Blanchard, who has been on the force since 1975 and a detective since 1981. "He is one of the smartest and coolest criminals I've ever run up against." Williams is condemned to die for the Sept. 2, 1991, murders of Theodore Wynn, William "Bucky" Dent, Alfonda Madison and Eric Howard, which took place in the early morning hours. Police say the murders of Dent, Madison and Howard were part of Williams' plot to take over the drug trade on the East Side that he lost when he went to California. Wynn, a friend of Madison's, was on leave from the U. S. Air Force. He was looking for Madison when Williams kidnapped and shot him. The 4 were duct taped and shot execution style in Madison's home. Blanchard said Madison was tortured before he was killed. Williams, who wanted to be known as "The Prince of the Brook" because of the drug action he controlled around the Kimmelbrook area of the East Side, was smart and calm, Blanchard said. Those who worked for him were expected to behave and not sample any of the product they were selling. "People that worked for him, he set very strict standards," Blanchard said. "They had to be reliable. They had to dress better after they worked for him. He was quite a taskmaster. He was a very disciplined guy." Trumbull County Assistant Prosecutor Ken Bailey, who had prosecuted the Williams case for Mahoning County, said he had also heard of Flip's conversion on a radio show, where he told a preacher he wanted to talk to those involved in the area drug trade to convince them of the errors of their ways. Bailey said he did not buy Williams' spiel. "I'm thinking, 'Oh, my God, he's setting up a massacre,'" Bailey said. Williams had an infatuation with former mob kingpin Joey Naples, wanting to emulate him, Bailey said. "He wanted to be the black 'Godfather' of Youngstown," Bailey said. Bailey also said that Williams would have killed as many people as possible that morning, but the teenager he was using was only able to lure Madison, Dent and Howard to the home. "He was just starting at that point," Bailey said. Bailey said prosecutors suspect Williams in at least 14 homicides but were never able to charge him because witnesses either ended up dead or were scared away from testifying. Blanchard and Bailey both said that when Williams killed someone, he had everyone with him fire into the body so police could not suspect one person. Before the murders, Williams was the head of a gang that was suspected of several bar robberies. Police could never tie Williams to the robberies personally, even though members of his gang had been arrested. Bailey said that to get into the gang, aspiring members had to kill someone. Williams then went to California just as the street gangs began booming and became a member of the Crips, establishing some ties with Colombian drug dealers. Blanchard said Williams planned to build a Los Angeles to Youngstown connection for drugs, but before he could put his scheme into action, he was arrested with a large weight of drugs and drew a prison sentence in the Golden State. In Youngstown, it was a time when gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips and others were in the violent process of carving up turf to control the city's illicit drug trade. Detectives and prosecutors recalled the deadly method in which Williams planned to recapture his East Side drug empire: He used a then 16-year-old girl to go to Madison's home with two other juveniles, drawing them maps of both the inside and the outside of the home. They managed to distract Madison until Williams got inside after he spoke to the girl through a communications device he brought at a Radio Shack store in the Lincoln Knolls Plaza. He put Madison in a back room and was torturing him when Wynn came looking for his friend. The girl said he was not there but Williams told her to get Wynn to come back to the home because Wynn could identify her. Once inside, Wynn was also duct taped and placed in a back room. The girl then lured Dent and Howard to the home, and they were overpowered by Williams and duct taped in a bathroom. After instructing the girl to turn up the stereo, Madison and Wynn were each shot in the back of the head. Williams assured Dent he would not harm him before shooting him and Howard in the bathroom. He left the weapon, a .357 Magnum that was Madison's, at the home. Blanchard and his then partner, Detective Sgt. Gerald Maietta, were in the middle of a year that saw more than 30 homicides. Blanchard said he remembers the call from Chief of Detectives Capt. Robert Kane around 3 a.m. that they had to look at 4 more bodies that had just died violently. "We were all fried," Blanchard said. Once they arrived, the buzz among the large crowd at the scene was that Williams was responsible, so he was a suspect immediately, Blanchard said. The next day, Williams heard there were threats against the life of his son, so he drove with the girl from his South Side apartment and got in a shootout with some of Madison's people. No one was injured, and police found Williams and the girl walking on a side street. He was taken in for questioning and denied involvement in the murders. He was given a citation for leaving the scene of an accident and released. After acting on a series of tips, the two juveniles and the girl were questioned, and they all gave statements about the crime. The girl, however, was missing when Blanchard received a call from her mother, saying she was on a bus for Los Angeles to meet with some friends of Williams. Concerned, Blanchard found the bus and had police in Shreveport, La., take her off and hold her. By this point, Williams was arrested, and the girl was taken back to Youngstown when Williams escaped with several other inmates from the old Mahoning County Jail on Boardman Street by shimmying down a bed sheet. The others were recaptured quickly, but Williams fled. Police later learned he had been in Baltimore and Cleveland. Williams came back with a bang when he enlisted a crack addict from Cleveland and his nephew in an attempt to break into the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center, where his accomplices were being held. Dressed as a police officer, the crack addict pretended he was bringing in a prisoner - Williams' nephew - and he got security to buzz him in. Williams then appeared, carrying an AK-47 and asking a female guard for the keys. She said a deputy took them on his rounds, but the keys were inside a drawer. The deputy returned and was overpowered, but JJC staff got a whiff of something wrong and called police. SWAT teams and city police surrounded the JJC, and Williams was talked into giving himself up by his attorney, Gerald Ingram. Blanchard said he was worried for the safety of his witnesses when Williams escaped from the jail. "Without the witnesses, we couldn't have convicted him," Blanchard said. The detective also said he was surprised that Williams instructed his lawyers to not speak on his behalf during a recent clemency hearing by the Department of Corrections. "Maybe he's just tired," Blanchard said. "I don't know. I've thought about that a lot, because it does seem uncharacteristic." Blanchard compared Williams to a mafia chieftain, with his manners and laid-back demeanor. "But you know they would kill you in a minute," Blanchard added. "Flip would too." "Flip was a stone cold killer," Bailey added. Lt. Robin Lees, who heads up the county SWAT team and worked in narcotics for several years, said Williams was one of the best-behaved people he's ever been around and that everything Williams did was for business, a description that both Blanchard and Bailey agreed with. Blanchard noted that during one of the searches of Williams' apartment, he and Maietta found several newspaper clippings on the death of Naples, who was gunned down less than a month before the homicides outside a construction site at his Beaver Township home. Williams' trial had to be moved to Summit County for security reasons, especially after security personnel found a box of bullets in the Mahoning County Courthouse while jury selection was underway. Williams almost managed to escape one more time in the Summit County Jail, when he was missing from his cell and later found in a laundry room. And Bailey said the day he received a receipt from the Radio Shack store for the case, someone entered a back room of the store and tried to set a fire where their records were being kept. Williams is also fascinating, Bailey said, because he came from a solid family background. He said Williams had a stable family and was not lacking for material things. "He just wanted to be a criminal from a young age," Bailey said. Bailey has now put 3 inmates on death row now, and has also prosecuted hundreds of murder cases including serial killers and mafia hitman. He said Williams belongs there. "Flip is like one of the worst," Bailey said. "If anybody should get the death penalty, it would be Flip." (source: The Tribune Chronicle) SOUTH CAROLINA: State Supreme Court affirms death sentence The state Supreme Court on Monday upheld the 2003 death sentence and murder conviction of a man sentenced to death for killing a state trooper. Jesse Waylon Sapp shot Highway Patrol Cpl. Kenneth Jeffrey Johnson during a traffic checkpoint in 2002. Sapp's attorneys claimed a woman with a religious conviction against the death penalty was improperly excluded from the jury and that certain testimony from Sapp's girlfriend should have been allowed. During questioning, potential juror Kathleen McNair began crying when asked if her Methodist faith and the Ten Commandments' prohibition on killing would affect her ability to deliberate on a jury. But the justices ruled that the trial judge used proper discretion in allowing the juror to be removed. "We find the record fully supports the trial court's removal of the juror," the ruling said. The defense also said the trial court erred in blocking testimony of Kathryn Boles, Sapp's girlfriend, as to whether she would like to see Sapp put to death. "Although we agree that Boles should have been allowed to testify as to whether she wished to see Sapp put to death, her failure to respond to this question was in now way prejudicial," the Supreme Court ruled. Boles, who was with Sapp at the time of the shooting, pleaded guilty to charges of harboring a fugitive and possession of Xanax and was sentenced to five years of suspended jail time in 2003. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: A judge signs death warrant for Crips gang co-founder In Los Angeles, a judge signed a death warrant Monday for convicted killer and Crips co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams, rejecting his attorneys' request for a 9-day delay in his execution date. Williams is scheduled to die Dec. 13 at San Quentin prison for 4 murders committed in 1979. His lawyers asked that the date be set for Dec. 22 so they would have more time to ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency. Williams was sentenced in 1981 to die for 4 killings during 2 holdups. "This case has taken over 24 years to get to this point," Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders said. "That is a long delay in itself and I would hate to add to that delay." The Dec. 13 execution date means attorneys have until Nov. 8 to submit the clemency request to the governor. The judge said Williams' lawyers could ask the governor for more time to tell him about the good work Williams has done since renouncing his gang past. Since being sentenced to die, Williams has written a series of children's books in his effort to curtail youth gang violence. He has been nominated 5 times for a Nobel Peace prize and 4 times for a Nobel prize in literature. Dozens of death penalty opponents held a quiet demonstration outside the courtroom calling for mercy. They held a banner praising Williams' work to prevent gang violence that read, "Keeping him alive saves lives!" One of Williams' attorneys, Peter Fleming Jr., said he has never handled a death penalty case before and he asked for more time to ensure that Williams' legal team could do everything possible to help him. "More than a few people have said he is worth saving," Fleming said. (source: Associated Press) *************************** Judge Rejects Request To Delay Crips Co-Founder's Execution----Williams Will Be Executed Dec. 13 A Los Angeles judge signed a death warrant Monday for convicted killer and Crips co-founder "Tookie" Williams, rejecting his attorneys' request for a 9-day delay in his execution date. Williams is scheduled to die Dec. 13 at San Quentin prison for 4 murders committed in 1979. Since being sentenced to die, Williams has written a series of children's books in his effort to curtail youth gang violence. Since being condemned to death, Williams has renounced his gang past, penned children's books, been the subject of a cable television movie starring Jamie Foxx and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for work he has done to curtail youth violence -- all from his 9-foot-by-4-foot cell on San Quentin's death row. Now 51, Williams was 16 when he and a high school friend, Raymond Washington, began the Crips street gang in South Los Angeles in 1971. Known as "Big Took" to fellow Crips, Williams helped build the gang into a nationwide criminal enterprise that continues to spawn street violence more than 30 years later. In 1981, he was sentenced to death for the 1979 murders -- which he denies committing and which occurred the same year that Washington was killed during a gang confrontation. The 1st victim in the killings, which took place during 2 separate robberies 2 weeks apart, was Albert Lewis Owens, a 23-year-old Whittier 7- Eleven employee. An immunized government witness testified that he, Williams and 2 other men took $120 from the store's cash register. He said Williams then shot the young man execution-style and mocked the gurgling sounds the victim made as he lay dying. Williams was also found guilty of the shotgun murders of Thsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yee Chen Lin. The couple and their daughter owned a South Vermont Avenue motel that the gang targeted for robbery. Williams presented an alibi defense at his trial. Attorneys handling his appeal argued that Los Angeles County prosecutors had engaged in racial discrimination by seeking to keep black people off the jury. In February, a majority of the judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted against re-hearing Williams' appeal. And on Oct. 11, the U.S. Supreme Court declined, without comment, to review his case. The high court's decision cleared the way for Williams' execution by lethal injection -- unless Schwarzenegger intervenes. But no condemned murderer has been granted clemency in California since 1967. (source: NBC News) USA/MISSOURI: Prison Commission to focus on corrections officers and conditions that compromise safety behind bars; witnesses to testify at the law school Nov. 1-2 "Problems and Solutions in American Criminal Justice," a panel discussion featuring Commission members, will be held Oct. 31 On any given day 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States, and over the course of a year an estimated 13.5 million individuals are confined in prison or jail for some period of time. Another 750,000 men and women spend their days and nights working in correctional facilities. Despite their numbers, they are largely invisible to outsiders. The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, a year-long national effort to explore the most serious problems behind bars in America today and how to solve them, will hold its third public hearing from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 1-2 in Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310. The hearing, hosted by the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, will focus on corrections officers - a vast, yet poorly understood workforce that shoulders tremendous responsibilities, often without adequate leadership, training, or resources. Officers, administrators, labor leaders, former prisoners, and other witnesses will describe pivotal changes in the workforce and the job and conditions that jeopardize the health and safety of both officers and prisoners. Those conditions range from under-staffing and compulsory overtime to inadequate training in the use of force. In addition to illuminating the problems behind bars, this hearing and the others are designed to promote discussion about practical solutions - ideas that will be captured in the Commission's final report and recommendations, which is expected in May 2006. "Hundreds of thousands of people work in our vast correctional system; if we are going to solve America's prisons' and jails' pressing problems we need to learn much more from both their successes and their failures," says Margo Schlanger, professor of law and member of the Commission. "This hearing will provide a great opportunity for that kind of learning, for the Commission and also for our community, including our students and faculty. Prior to the hearing, the School of Law will host a panel discussion on "Problems and Solutions in American Criminal Justice" at 3 p.m. Oct. 31 in Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 305. The panel, moderated by Schlanger, features 3 other members of the Commission. Dr. Richard Dudley, a New York-based forensic psychiatrist; Saul Green, former United States attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and court-appointed monitor of the Cincinnati Police Department; and Gary Maynard, president-elect of the American Correctional Association and director of the Iowa Department of Corrections. After the close of the hearing on Nov. 2, Steven B. Bright, Commission member and director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, will give a talk on "Crime, Prison, and the Death Penalty: The Influence of Race and Poverty" at 4 p.m. in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall. The lecture is part of the law school's Public Interest Law Speakers Series. The panel discussion, lecture and hearing are free and open to the public. Visit http://law.wustl.edu/Whatsnew/prisonhearing.html for additional event details. Information about witnesses that will be testifying during the hearing is available at http://www.prisoncommission.org/. ******************************** Renowned capital punishment opponent Stephen B. Bright to deliver Assembly Series and School of Law joint lecture Nationally recognized attorney and human rights advocate Stephen Bright will discuss his views on the death penalty and the current state of the U.S. prison system in a talk entitled, "Crime, Prison, and the Death Penalty: The Influence of Race and Poverty." The talk, part of Washington University's Assembly Series and the School of Law's "Access to Justice" series, will be held at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 2 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom, Anheuser-Busch Hall. Bright is best known as Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, based in Atlanta. This public interest legal project provides poor people who have been convicted of crimes or who are in prison with greater access to lawyers and more equal treatment in America's courts. The Center also provides legal representation to people facing the death penalty and to prisoners facing cruel and unconstitutional prison conditions. As head of the Center since 1982, Bright has worked tirelessly to eliminate the inequality and racial discrimination that he sees poor people and minorities encounter in the judicial system. He believes that "The criminal justice system is the part of our society that [has] been the least effected by the civil rights movement." Bright has also become one of the nation's most outspoken opponents of the death penalty, representing people facing the death penalty at trials and on appeals since 1979. In 1988, he argued the case of Amadeo v. Zant before the U.S. Supreme Court, in which the death sentence was set aside because of racial discrimination. He has testified before committees of Congress and at the state level in a number of southern states. In addition, he has been involved in several programs to increase the quality and fairness of representation of poor people in the judicial courts. Bright served as a legal services attorney with the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund, representing poor people in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky in jail conditions, welfare rights and other civil litigation. In 1981, he also served as the executive director of the District of Columbia Law Students in Court Program, which gives law students the opportunity to provide legal assistance to the impoverished in civil and criminal cases. Bright currently teaches courses on the death penalty and criminal law at Yale and Harvard law schools. He earned his bachelor's degree and his law degree at the University of Kentucky. Bright has written extensively on the topics of criminal justice, corrections and judicial independence. His articles have been published in prominent law journals around the country, such as the New York University Law Review and the Yale Law Journal. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards and honors, including the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award in 1998, the Roger-Baldwin Medal of Liberty presented by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1991, and the Kutak-Dodds Prize by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in 1992. Assembly Series lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, please call 935-4620 or go online to assemblyseries.wustl.edu. (source for both: Washington University in St. Louis) NEW JERSEY: Forum seeks abolishment of capital punishment There hasn't been a state-sponsored execution in New Jersey for more than 40 years, but with 10 people on death row, at least 1 death penalty opponent fears one could happen soon. A forum on ending the death penalty was held yesterday at St. John's Episcopal Church, featuring representatives from New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Somerset Voices for Peace and Justice, the Somerset County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International. Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said her organization holds almost 100 such speaking engagements a year to discuss capital punishment and pending state legislation that would replace the death penalty with life without parole. She believes the best way to talk about the death penalty is through other people's stories, so she brought 2 speakers with her to yesterday's forum at the West High Street church. One was Nate Walker, who spent 12 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of rape and kidnapping. A blood test proved Walker, who was picked out of a lineup by a rape victim in 1974, was innocent in 1986. "If my case were a death penalty case, I would not be here speaking to you," he said. The other speaker was Eddie Hicks of Galloway whose 26-year-old daughter, Jamila, was murdered 5 years ago in North Carolina. "If someone in your family was murdered, people assume you support the death penalty. I know that's not true," Hicks said. Though he said he felt anger after his daughter was shot in the head after a fight, he held true to his opposition to the death penalty. He said his daughter shared that belief, so he talks about his death penalty views in her honor. "What purpose does it serve to have another person dead?" he said. (source: Home News Tribune) ARKANSAS: Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills----A film review by Christopher Null, filmcritic.com Paradise Lost is a haunting and tragic documentary about three Arkansas teens enamored with wicca and paganism, who find themselves headed for death row and/or life in prison after three local pre-teens are mysteriously murdered and mutilated. Fingers are pointed, blame is laid, but the only apparent truth to come out of the film is that the three kids doing time are almost undoubtedly not the ones responsible for the murders. Why are they convicted? It's a long story, but one of the three accused kids has a very low IQ and was -- possibly -- coerced into a confession, dragging his friends along with him. It doesn't help that they have long hair and listen to Metallica. Famous documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky obtain amazing access to all sides of the case throughout the trials, getting up close and personal with the accused, their families, the local law enforcement, the parents of the victims, and pretty much everyone else in the small Arkansas town -- which almost unilaterally has judged them guilty as hell. The film's depiction of justice gone wrong is one thing, but the film's biggest horror is probably seen in the lucid Mark Byers, the father of one of the murdered boys. His story is tragic, to be sure, but when he tells the filmmakers how he's going to spit on the graves of the accused -- not to mention the "other bodily functions" he says he will undoubtedly be feeling the urges to do. Later he goes target shooting at a pumpkin in the back country, offering a running commentary wherein he imagines he's firing at the accused children. Even later, he's fingered as a possible -- even likely -- suspect in the murders, though nothing really comes of this. Many films like this have a tendency to run long -- and at 2 1/2 hours, Paradise Lost is no exception. Some of the scenes have a tendency to repeat older information, and it doesn't help that the film has to cover two separate trials when the cases are split. Still, it's a powerful movie with an even more powerful message: Never get arrested in the south. The film's subject matter was revisited five years later in a sequel, which, if you find this story intriguing, you really ought to check out as well. The recent film The Staircase is also frighteningly similar in tone. The new DVD, released over 10 years after the film's release, includes some recent updates (nothing much to report aside from material seen in Paradise Lost 2), and additional footage from the trials. (source: filmcritic.com) NEW YORK: Freedom's just a start America is home to a small, little-known community of survivors whose lives have been shattered by tragedy - a man-made disaster known as wrongful conviction. New York is no stranger to this disaster. America's most recently exoneree prisoner, Barry Gibbs, was freed from a New York prison on Sept. 29 - after spending 19 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. At 57, Gibbs reentered society without money, without family (his mother and ex-wife both died while he was incarcerated), and without a home or livelihood. His cruel, yet heroic struggle, is shared by other innocent men wrongfully convicted and later proven innocent after years of unjust incarceration. Since 1989, approximately 400 people have been exonerated across the U.S., including 121 from death row. While the guilty typically leave prison supported by an array of reentry programs, including the parole system, the exonerated receive little or no assistance to enable them to transition back into society. In fact, with the exception of Massachusetts, no state provides government-supported health care, counseling, job training or housing assistance for these individuals. Most states don't even offer financial compensation to the wrongfully convicted. Consider the fate of the seven exonerees featured in "After Innocence," a newly released film I produced and directed. Only one, from Massachusetts, has received compensation from his state government. The others won't receive a penny under their states' existing laws. New York is one of the few states that provide compensation without a maximum cap, but compensation requires a cumbersome hearing process to prove damages. By contrast, the federal government last year passed the Justice For All Act, which provides those convicted of a federal crime $50,000 for each year of unjust incarceration, with $100,000 for those who served on Death Row. State governments should follow Washington's lead. The public has recently begun to recognize the plight of the exonerated, but two fundamental steps must be taken to help make these broken lives whole again: First, all states need to enact meaningful compensation statutes that will enable the innocent to handle the financial realities of reentering society upon their release. Secondly, the federal and/or state governments must immediately fund a program to provide the exonerated with reentry services similar to those provided to the guilty by the parole model. The private, nonprofit group, Life After Exoneration Program, is the nation's only organization offering job training and other help to a network of exonerees nationwide. The program needs funding to bring this model to all 50 states - something that could happen soon if only the federal and state governments, foundations and the public come to recognize society's moral obligation to assist the exonerated. The exonerated number only in the hundreds, and remain largely overlooked. This needs to change immediately or society will have failed the exonerated twice - first, by incarcerating them unjustly, and again by failing to support their reentry into society. (source: New York Daily News -- Marc Simon is an attorney at Dreier LLP in New York City and is the writer and producer of "After Innocence.")
