Jan. 11
CALIFORNIA:
Justices split over death penalty----Court reinstates California inmate's
death sentence, 5-4
Justices overturned an appeals court ruling that declared Ronald Sanders'
sentence unconstitutional. Sanders was put on death row in the 1982
killing of a woman during a drug-related robbery in Bakersfield,
California.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the ruling, the court's 1st death penalty
decision since Roberts replaced Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist last
fall.
The case presented a technical question for the court involving jurors'
consideration of invalid aggravating factors.
Special circumstances used by prosecutors in their case against Sanders --
that the crime was committed during a burglary and was cruel or heinous --
were later found invalid.
California argued that Sanders would have been sentenced to death even
without those arguments. The Supreme Court's 5 conservative members
agreed.
"The erroneous factor could not have 'skewed' the sentence, and no
constitutional violation occurred," Scalia wrote in an opinion joined by
Roberts, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justices Anthony Kennedy
and Clarence Thomas.
In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said "this decision is more likely
to complicate than to clarify our capital sentencing jurisprudence."
Also disagreeing with the decision were Justices David H. Souter, Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, although their reasons were varied.
In a lengthy dissent, Breyer said the court's finding could "deprive a
defendant of a fair and reliable sentencing proceeding."
(source: Associated Press)
***************
Killing Tookie....Schwarzenegger's Hit List
"The dedication of Williams' book 'Life in Prison' casts significant doubt
on his personal redemption...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."
So reads the statement of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in denying
clemency for Stan Tookie Williams. Twelve hours after the statement was
issued, Stan was brought into the execution chamber at San Quentin Prison,
and the former gang leader-turned-internationally renown peacemaker was
put to death.
Schwarzenegger claimed the dedication of Stan's Life in Prison
autobiography showed that his record of turning his life around was a
fraud.
But the men and women on Stan's list aren't "criminals." They are
revolutionaries--African Americans and Native Americans who were subjected
to the dehumanizing conditions of U.S. prisons, but who refused to submit,
and dedicated their lives to the struggle against racism and oppression.
By singling out this dedication, Schwarzenegger and his aides showed that
Stan Tookie Williams died most of all because of the political challenge
he represented to the status quo of racism and repression in the U.S.
today.
* * *
Williams's supporters continued to hold out hope that Schwarzenegger would
grant clemency even as the December 13 execution date approached. During
his 2 years in office, Schwarzenegger had seemed less hard-line on
law-and-order issues than his predecessor, Democrat Grey Davis, and the
governor claimed to reporters that he was struggling over the decision.
But the statement released by Schwarzenegger to justify denying clemency
proved that he never had any intention of stopping the execution. As
University of Southern California law professor Jody Armour told a
reporter, "There is nothing in the tone of the governor's decision that
suggests it was a close call or agonized over."
The statement condemns Stan for refusing to admit to his role in the four
murders he was convicted of.
But Stan always proclaimed his innocence in these cases. In demanding that
Stan do "the one thing Williams will not do" and confess, Schwarzenegger
and his aides ignored the strong evidence that Stan was wrongfully
convicted--and the climate of racist hysteria that accompanied his
original trial, in which the prosecutor compared Stan in the courtroom to
a "Bengel tiger" caged at the zoo.
As for Stan's decade-long campaign to warn young people against gangs,
crime and prisons, the statement dismissed them out of hand. "[T]he
continued pervasiveness of gang violence leads one to question the
efficacy of Williams' message," it smugly concluded--effectively holding
Stan responsible for all gang-related crime.
But the most despicable passage in the statement came at the end, when it
smeared the revolutionaries to whom Stan dedicated his autobiography.
"[I]t seems to me that we saw a very intentional politicization of this
process, namely the equation of what Schwarzenegger would call lawlessness
and criminality with radical political activism," said Angela Davis when
asked about being singled out in the statement. "It is revealing, it seems
to me, that every single name he evoked by quoting the dedication from
Tookie's autobiography--every single name is the name of a person of
color, a black person or a Native person."
Befitting the California setting, the statement gives special treatment to
George Jackson, a former California prisoner who became a leader of the
Black liberation struggle while incarcerated in San Quentin, and who was
gunned down by prison guards in 1971. In a further passage and a footnote,
the statement shamelessly repeats the discredited pack of lies--a wild
story about an escape attempt and a handgun concealed in Jackson's
hair--told by San Quentin officials to justify the assassination.
The venom of this and other parts of the Schwarzenegger statement is
worthy of the most right wing of Republican prosecutors, or maybe the head
of the politically influential prison guards' union--someone still angry
that George Jackson's book Soledad Brother became a best seller.
But that's not who wrote it. According to the Los Angeles Times, "the
statement was largely drafted by Andrea Hoch, Schwarzenegger's legal
affairs secretary, and her predecessor, Peter Siggins."
Before working for Schwarzenegger, both Hoch and Siggins served in the
attorney general's office under Democrat Bill Lockyer--who is considered a
frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to run against Schwarzenegger.
Their role in authoring the governator's political hit job underlines how
little difference there is in either wing of the California political
establishment over the crimes of the racist injustice system.
But for the thousands of people who took action to stop Stan's execution,
we will remember the struggle against racism and oppression that Stan--and
the revolutionaries he dedicated his autobiography to--stood for.
(source: Alan Maass is the editor of the Socialist Worker. Joe Allen
writes for the Socialist Worker and CounterPunch; CounterPunch)
