Dec. 4
MARYLAND----impending execution
Requests to delay execution rejected
Attorneys for Wesley Eugene Baker failed yesterday to persuade 2 courts to
postpone Baker's execution by lethal injection, which could occur as early
as Monday.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan rejected a request to halt the
execution based on a claim that the protocol approved for the execution
required further review, including public input.
Kaplan said that to halt the execution based on the arguments by Baker's
attorneys would rewind more than a decade of court proceedings.
"It means 13 years of litigation in federal and state courts is
meaningless if you could just stop this thing like hitting a brick wall,"
Kaplan said during the hearing.
Also yesterday, the Maryland Court of Appeals denied a separate request
for a stay of execution based on a claim that Baker's lawyers failed to
effectively represent him by not presenting information on his family
background at sentencing in 1992.
Baker's attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court late yesterday afternoon to
review that denial.
The decisions come a day after a federal judge rejected a request to
postpone Baker's execution, saying attorneys did not prove that the drugs
used in lethal injections cause unnecessary pain.
Baker, 47, was sentenced to death for the 1991 murder of Jane Tyson, a
49-year-old teacher's aide.
His lawyers have also asked Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. for clemency.
**************
Wife, mother, teacher, victim----With killer facing execution, friends and
kin lament lack of attention to the life lost
Jane Frances Tyson counseled rookie schoolteachers. She sent strawberry
pie to her husband's office. She liked to dance, and she loved to go
shopping for her grandchildren.
She took 2 of them, a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, to the
Westview Mall on a June evening in 1991 to look for shoes. She bought a
pair, and everyone went back to the car - and that's where the 49-year-old
woman was shot dead, in front of the children.
Next week's scheduled execution of Wesley Eugene Baker, the man convicted
of 1st-degree murder in Tyson's death, has renewed the debate about the
morality and the legality of Maryland's system for capital punishment.
Those who knew Jane Tyson say her life and death should not be left out of
the discussion.
"All the talk is about the man who did it," said Betty Ireland, Tyson's
neighbor and friend. "But he didn't give her any appeal. He snuffed her
out without a second thought."
Tyson's brother, Martin E. Andree, shared the sentiment. "My question is,
who speaks for Jane?" he asked. "Who speaks for a woman who left three
children? A woman with a husband and grandchildren she loved? A teacher, a
woman who was taking care of our parents?"
Tyson's husband, John N. Tyson, and one of her daughters declined to be
interviewed for this article, and 2 other daughters did not return calls.
But her brother, her next-door neighbor and the family priest, along with
news accounts from when she was killed, provide a look at a woman who was
highly regarded in the schoolhouse, her church and her neighborhood.
For instance, Tyson routinely visited neighbors if she knew they were
sick, said Ireland, the neighbor: "She went out of her way to be kind to
people, not only her husband, her kids and her grandchildren, but
everyone."
Born Jane Andree, she grew up in the Woodlawn area. Her only sibling,
Martin Andree, is 4 years older. "Jane was very reliable, even as child,"
he said.
She was a teacher's aide at Riverview Elementary School in southwest
Baltimore County for 10 years. She worked with second-graders and helped
teach arts and crafts.
Her husband was the principal at Johnnycake Elementary School. The couple
lived in the Catonsville neighborhood of Westview Park and were active at
what was then St. Lawrence Church in Woodlawn, where Jane Tyson was taking
a class to formally become Catholic.
"She was very much in love with her husband, and he was very much in love
with her," said the Rev. Lou Martin, the priest at the parish where the
couple worshiped. "It was obvious."
He described John Tyson as the kind of husband who, if told by his wife
that she wanted a steak, would stand out in the rain cooking it over the
grill. And Jane Tyson was the kind of person who would deliver soup to a
sick neighbor or send in a pie to her husband's office, friends and
relatives said.
The couple often traveled, sometimes with Elder Hostel programs, which
combine travel with education. They liked to go bowling, Andree said. And
Ireland said they often worked side by side in a garden in their backyard
or in the flower beds around the trees in front of their house.
Jane Tyson was also busy caring daily for her elderly parents and keeping
up with her 5 grandchildren, who often came to play at the Tysons' house.
The Sunday before her death, she had stopped to tell her parish priest how
excited she was about joining the church. "She was almost like a little
kid about it," said Martin, who is now at St. Anthony of Padua Church in
Northeast Baltimore.
The Tysons were preparing for a family vacation down South - one of the
Carolinas, as the priest recalls - when she went shopping that Thursday
evening in June 1991.
Ireland remembers that she and Tyson were leaving their houses at the same
time - Ireland to get milk from the grocery store and Tyson to buy tennis
shoes for her grandchildren.
Tyson was about to leave the mall parking lot when a man approached the
driver's side of her car. Witnesses said they heard a gunshot and saw the
man run across the parking lot and jump into a Chevrolet Blazer.
"I saw the woman lying on the ground; her head was all bloody. The truck
took off like a bat out of hell. Then I saw the little girl, about 4, run
around the car yelling, 'Mommy, Mommy,' or 'Mom-Mom,' and I took off after
them," one bystander who drove after the robbers said later.
Another bystander ran to Tyson's car and shepherded the grandchildren to
security officers in the mall.
Police trapped Baker in the Blazer. The shoes that Tyson had just
purchased were lying on the front seat of her car, police said. The other
suspect was caught, with Tyson's purse - which contained, police said,
$10.
Martin, the priest, said he was called by Tyson's oldest daughter to
comfort a grieving family, but he didn't immediately recognize the woman's
married name. When John Tyson answered the door, Martin said, "What are
you doing here?" he recalled.
"When he said, 'It's Jane,' I just couldn't believe it. I lost my breath,"
Martin said. "I just sat with the family. I was broken-hearted too."
Ireland recalled taking some dinner to John one night not long after the
funeral. "I remember him saying, 'I don't miss the food. I miss the
cook,'" she said.
The job of helping to care for Tyson's parents was left to Tyson's oldest
daughter, said Martin Andree.
2 trials followed, one for Baker and another for Gregory Lawrence, then
34, who was found guilty of 1st-degree murder and armed robbery. He was
sentenced to life in prison, plus 33 years.
In 1992, Baker was found guilty of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to
death.
In the years that followed, Tyson missed the births of 2 more
grandchildren and missed seeing the others graduate from high school and
go off to college, said Andree, who has 8 grandchildren - 5 of whom never
met Tyson.
Baker's death warrant was signed by a judge in 2002. But a week before
Baker was scheduled to be executed, Gov. Parris N. Glendening imposed a
moratorium on the death penalty while a state-ordered University of
Maryland study of capital punishment was completed.
Lawyers for Baker, 47, failed yesterday to persuade two courts to postpone
Baker's execution by lethal injection, but they continue to seek to have
his death sentence overturned.
Andree described each of Baker's appeals as a "stab" in an open wound.
"There's been no closure, not for her three daughters or the 2
grandchildren in the car when she was killed," he said.
Andree said he supports the death penalty "because that's what the
judicial system said would happen. ... It's about time to carry out the
sentence."
He said he was upset by Cardinal William H. Keeler's recent visit to his
sister's killer. Those who don't believe in the death penalty should "work
on changing the law, not subverting the law," said Andree, a Department of
Defense contractor who lives in Destin, Fla. He added that he hopes
Maryland's governor doesn't bend to political pressure and call off the
scheduled execution at the last minute.
Martin, the priest, said he was asked by the cardinal to reach out to Jane
Tyson's family to express the church's support and love, and he said he
had spoken recently with her husband and one of her daughters.
"Whether they take this man's life or not, it's not going to bring their
mother back," said Martin. "But I can't judge. It's very painful."
Ireland has been having a difficult time sorting out how she feels about
it. "On one hand, I think, 'Let's just get this over with.' But I also
don't believe in an eye for an eye. I'd feel better if I knew what Jane's
thoughts were on this.
"I value the sanctity of life," she said. "But I also value Jane's life."
**********************
The crime, not his race, put Baker on death row
So another Maryland death row inmate is scheduled to take the lethal
injection needle. And, again, anti-death penalty activists have yanked out
their ever-handy race card.
Wesley Baker killed Jane Tyson in 1991 on the parking lot of Westview Mall
in Catonsville. Not even the presence of Tyson's 2 grandchildren deterred
Baker. He was sentenced to death for the crime, and his death warrant says
he should be executed sometime next week.
Baker is black. His victim was white. Death penalty opponents point to
that to support their claim that Maryland's death penalty is racist. They
talk of a racial disparity -- blacks are disproportionately represented on
death row, and they're more likely to wind up there if they killed a white
person.
They also talk about another disparity: None of the blacks on death row in
Maryland was convicted of killing blacks. Now let's be clear why the
disparity exists. Many of Maryland's black murder victims are slain in
Baltimore by other blacks, and city prosecutors seldom, if ever, seek
capital punishment. The "racial disparity" is, in fact, a geographical one
that proves there may be something to the adage that "geography is fate."
That adage was driven home to me this year, when my cousin Nathaniel
Gulliver was killed in January in a recovery house just south of the 28th
Street bridge. I don't think anybody in my family has any illusions that
his killer will get the death penalty. Not in this town. Heck, I'd just
like to see the guy go to trial. The case has already been postponed once.
My cousin Nate was held hostage along with several others while the gunman
tried to extort money from another resident of the recovery house,
according to police. The money was to pay a drug debt. Nate left, cleaned
out his bank account and gave the money to the gunman, who still shot the
guy who owed him the money and several others, including my cousin.
When the suspect goes to trial in January (assuming there are no further
postponements), I'm not expecting prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
They don't seek it in most of the other murder cases in Baltimore, either.
That has nothing to do with racism or "racial disparities." It has plenty
to do with the nature of what kind of crime lands killers on death row:
felony murder.
And what do the data for felony murder suggest? Federal statistics on
nationwide homicide trends from 1976 to 2002 reveal that over 59 percent
of those arrested for felony murder are black. Fifty-five percent of
victims of felony murder are white.
In homicides where the perpetrator doesn't know his victim, the black
assailant-white victim murder happens four times more often than the
white-on-black murder. A death row comprising of a majority of black
convicts who were sentenced for killing white victims might be more a
reflection of that data than of any "racial disparity."
The "racial disparity" on Maryland's death row is no more a disparity than
the number of black guys any football fan can see on the defensive units
of many NFL teams. Get a lot of black guys interested in playing pro
football, and you'll have a league dominated by black players. Get too
many black guys committing felony murder, and you'll have death rows
dominated by black convicts. But in the liberal mind-set of death penalty
opponents, one is a racial disparity while the other is the way things
are.
That's because liberals need victims. But not just any victims. Murder
victims like a Jane Tyson or a Nathaniel Gulliver won't do for the
criminal-loving wing of liberal America. They need victims who aren't
really victims in any normal meaning of the word.
That's why liberals have recently gone on a crusade to restore felons'
voting rights, proclaiming disenfranchised felons as America's new crop of
victims. The fact that most felons got in their situation all on their own
and that most states provide a means for them to have their voting rights
restored by acting on their own doesn't deter liberals, who are in
constant need of non-victims to shove down the victimhood maw.
Jane Tyson was fatally shot 14 years ago through no fault of her own.
Wesley Baker is on death row today for the actions of Wesley Baker.
"Racial disparity" had nothing to do with it.
Don't expect any of those clamoring for Baker's clemency to utter that
truth.
(source--Column, Gregory Kane) (source for all: Baltimore Sun)
***********************
1,000 and counting
Barring a last-minute reprieve, Wesley Eugene Baker will be executed this
week for the murder of Jane Tyson, a not-yet-50 grandmother shot to death
in a shopping mall parking lot in front of her 2 young grandchildren. He
will become Maryland's latest enrollee in a club that now totals 1,000 -
inmates who have been executed since the Supreme Court reinstated the
death penalty in 1976. He won't be the last to die, because capital
punishment remains a lawful enterprise here, despite the apparent
inequities in its execution and the growing disquiet over its use.
Across the country, the death penalty remains a viable sentence in 38
states even as the integrity of the criminal justice system on which it
depends has been discredited. Poor lawyering, police-coerced confessions,
evidence withheld, mistaken witnesses or worse offer reasons aplenty to
revoke the death penalty. The use of DNA technology vastly improved the
quality of criminal evidence and, in turn, revealed just how imperfect our
system is.
As DNA evidence has upended more criminal convictions and freed more than
100 prisoners from death rows, fewer judges and juries have imposed death
sentences. The import of their actions is this: An imperfect system argues
against an irrevocable sentence. Consider the case of convicted murderer
Ruben Cantu. Texas, the leading state executioner, may have in fact
executed an innocent man when it killed Mr. Cantu in 1993. A witness last
month recanted the testimony that led to the conviction of Mr. Cantu, who
protested his innocence until his last breath.
The gravity of the death penalty is such that defendants must receive
every opportunity to acquit themselves of this punishment. And yet the
length of capital appeals offers another reason to forgo the death penalty
- these cases consume millions of taxpayer dollars that greatly exceed the
cost of imprisoning a death-eligible inmate for life. A study in New
Jersey found that the state has spent $253 million on capital cases since
1982 and has yet to execute a single individual. Justice in this instance
is rarely swift. A decade's worth of appeals and sentence reversals in the
case of convicted murderer Darris A. Ware was too much for his victims'
families - they pressed Anne Arundel prosecutors last year to seek life
without parole for the killer. Closure was what they wanted.
On Friday, a North Carolina man became the 1,000th person to be executed
in the United States since 1976. As many Americans wrestled with that
grievous notoriety, a jury in Florida was recommending death for a
convicted child rapist. As we said at the outset, Maryland is poised to
execute Mr. Baker 14 years after a Harford County jury convicted him.
There is no one reason to dispense with this ghastly form of punishment.
There are many reasons, too many to ignore.
(source: Opinion, Baltimore Sun)
*************************
Execution Still On Despite Racial Analysis
Wesley E. Baker was born of rape and convicted of murder. If the state of
Maryland has its way, he will die this week by lethal injection.
Absent intervention by the courts or Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), Baker
will be executed for the murder of Jane Tyson, who in 1991 was robbed in
the parking lot of a Catonsville mall and then shot to death in front of
her two grandchildren.
A poison drip will end an astonishing run of violence and tragedy that
began even before Baker's birth 47 years ago, when his mother was attacked
in an alley when she was not yet 14. "The product of serious trouble,"
Baker once said to a psychologist, recalling his view of himself as far
back as elementary school.
"I knew I would end up dead, in prison for the rest of my life, on death
row," his clemency petition says he told the psychologist. "If it could be
worse, I knew I would be a part of it."
Although a death warrant signed by Ehrlich orders that Baker be executed
this week, prison officials are prevented by law from disclosing the exact
date and time in advance. His would be the first execution in Maryland
since June of last year, when Steven Oken was put to death, and the 5th
since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Baker would also be the 1st black man to be executed in Maryland since
researchers documented sharp disparities -- racially and by jurisdiction
-- in how the state's capital punishment statute is used. Death penalty
opponents and the study's author say neither the legislature nor the
courts have responded adequately to the findings, announced nearly 3 years
ago.
The study, commissioned by Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) in 2000, found
that prosecutors were far more likely to seek the death penalty for black
suspects charged with killing white victims, as Baker was. It also found
that slayings in Baltimore County were far more likely to result in death
sentences than were slayings in other jurisdictions.
6 of the 7 men on Maryland's death row are black, and all but one of their
victims were white. 3 of the condemned men were convicted for killings in
Baltimore County.
In recent days, Baker's attorneys have filed a barrage of petitions and
appeals, none successful. They have challenged the method of execution,
contending that the trio of drugs used by the state has the potential to
feel like a "fire traveling through the vein to the heart" and could cause
Baker to be "tortured to death."
They have also asked Ehrlich to commute Baker's sentence to life without
the possibility of parole, detailing circumstances of Baker's childhood
that they say mitigate his crime. Ehrlich was considering the request this
weekend, a spokesman said.
In his first 20 years, Baker was exposed to a catalogue of horrors,
according to the accounts of his attorneys and psychologists in court
documents and the clemency petition. Born unwanted to a teenage mother, he
was sexually abused by age 5 and was using heroin regularly by age 10, his
attorneys wrote in the petition to the governor. By 14, Baker was living
with a prostitute twice his age, trading sex for drugs. He became a father
the next year.
"In the garden of life, this is the formula for rearing antisocials,"
Circuit Court Judge Cypert O. Whitfill said during a 1993 hearing to
review the death sentence he had given Baker the previous year.
At age 16, after being convicted for the 1st time in adult court, Baker
was sentenced to three years in prison for unauthorized use of a motor
vehicle. At age 19, in 1978, he was sentenced to 15 years for armed
robbery. He was released in 1987, and the next year his youngest brother
was shot in the back of the head in their neighborhood.
Baker was arrested again in 1989, on weapons and drug charges. He was
released in September 1990, less than a year before he and another man
encountered Tyson, a 49-year-old teacher's aide, at the Westview Mall,
where she had been buying shoes for her grandchildren.
Assistant State's Attorney S. Ann Brobst, who won the death sentence
against Baker, rejected the notion that he should be spared because of his
background. "I've had death penalty defendants come from all kinds of
different backgrounds," she said in an interview. "You see a lot of people
from really rough backgrounds that go on to lead productive lives."
It is undisputed that Baker and the other man, Gregory Lawrence, committed
the robbery that led to Tyson's death. And Baker's attorneys do not claim
that he is innocent of murder.
But they say that Lawrence may have been the gunman, noting that a federal
appeals court remarked that evidence that Baker shot Tyson "was not
overwhelming." Under state law, only the actual killer can be given the
death penalty.
Brobst dismissed the claim, saying a fingerprint on Tyson's window and
blood on Baker's clothing left no doubt about which man fired the fatal
shot. "One thing that's clear in this case is that there's no question who
the shooter was," she said.
In a letter to Ehrlich, Baker's mother wrote that she understood the Tyson
family's loss, having herself endured the killings of a brother and of her
youngest son.
"I'm a mother begging for her son's life," Delores Williams wrote. "I've
lost one son, please don't make it 2."
Yesterday, at a demonstration outside the Maryland Correctional Adjustment
Center in Baltimore, where her son is being held, Williams said, "We're
just so very sorry, but we don't want to see anyone else lose a life."
Tyson's brother, Martin Andree, said that to this day, the older of the
grandchildren who witnessed Tyson's murder has never spoken of it. Andree
said the family believes that Baker's execution is overdue. "He killed my
sister for $12 in broad daylight in front of her grandchildren," Andree
said. "A jury decided he should have the death penalty, and I don't think
anybody should stand in the way of that."
Tyson's family was tremendously pained, Brobst said, when Glendening
granted Baker a stay in 2002, just days before he was to die.
At the time, Glendening said he was imposing a moratorium on the death
penalty to give Raymond Paternoster, a University of Maryland professor,
time to complete his study.
Paternoster completed his work within months. In announcing his findings,
Paternoster said the explanation for the disparities rested with state's
attorneys, not juries, but he was careful not to impugn the prosecutors'
motives. He said that his analysis didn't mean "there is racial animus" by
prosecutors, but rather that "the product of their action does result in
racial disparity."
On Friday, he said executions should be stopped and the issue studied
further.
"It's as if these facts are there and everyone is afraid of them," he
said. "There's no question there are disparities. Whether they're the
product of racial discrimination, I don't know, and I'm not sure it
matters."
Baker's lead attorney, Gary Christopher, drew on the findings earlier this
year in arguments before the state's highest court. Christopher said
Maryland's criminal justice system has devalued the lives of black
residents, sending the message that "the Maryland death penalty statute is
there to protect white suburbanite communities from the predations of
black men."
The court rejected his argument. Although the ruling was based on a
procedural point, supporters of the death penalty were encouraged that the
judges cited a U.S. Supreme Court holding that statistical analyses were
insufficient to show individual cases were prosecuted unfairly.
In Virginia, Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) last week commuted the death sentence
of Robin M. Lovitt because the state had thrown out evidence.
Cardinal William H. Keeler, the archbishop of Baltimore, has also urged
Ehrlich to grant clemency. Keeler was joined in that request by Cardinal
Theodore E. McCarrick, the archbishop of Washington, and Michael A.
Saltarelli, the bishop of Wilmington, Del.
The governor's legal counsel, Jervis S. Finney, said Friday that the
petition is under consideration. "Governor Ehrlich has been analyzing
various aspects of this case -- including Paternoster and lethal injection
-- over many months, and that is anticipated to continue through the
weekend."
(source: Washington Post)
**************
Death Penalty Opponents Single Out Lt. Gov. Steele
Dozens of death penalty opponents appealed to Governor Ehrlich to spare
the life of Wesley Baker in a protest outside Baltimore's Supermax prison
on Sunday.
They also singled out Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, who, unlike his
boss, opposes capital punishment.
The activists criticized Steele for failing to produce a long-promised
study on the flaws in Maryland's death penalty system.
Bonnita Spikes, an organizer with Maryland Citizens Against State
Executions, says Steele "hasn't followed through."
Steele is running for the U.S. Senate.
His campaign spokesman says Steele is a man of his word and will deliver
an analysis of the death penalty in Maryland, but the spokesman declined
to say when that might happen.
(source: Associated Press)
MISSISSIPPI:
Man Convicted of Killing Miss. Relatives
In yazoon City, a jury convicted a former truck driver Saturday of killing
3 relatives who vanished from their home on Valentine's Day last year.
It took the jury about two hours to find Earnest Lee Hargon guilty of
capital murder. The defense called no witnesses during the trial.
"We're pleased," prosecutor Steven Waldrup said. "The evidence was
overwhelming. It's exactly what we expected."
Hargon was accused in the slayings of his cousin, Michael Hargon;
Michael's wife, Rebecca; and the couple's 4-year-old son, James.
The family disappeared from their home in Vaughan on Feb. 14, 2004. Blood
and spent bullet casings were discovered at the home. Prosecutors said
information Earnest Hargon gave authorities allowed them to find the
bodies about 2 weeks later, buried in woods off a road nearly 100 miles
from Vaughan.
The jury was to return to the courthouse Sunday to hear evidence in the
trial's sentencing phase. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Defense attorney Andre de Gruy said the defense will present Hargon as a
good man troubled by an addiction to crystal methamphetamine.
Defense attorney Wesley Evans said prosecutors ignored other possible
suspects, including a gang which may have had a grudge against Michael
Hargon for testifying against one of its members.
Michael Hargon's sister, Jennifer Hargon McBride, said the verdict was
bittersweet because her mother was not there when it was read. Diane
Hargon died of cancer Nov. 10.
"God has weird way of working sometimes," McBride said. "But we're strong
enough to get through it."
(source: Associated Press)
***********************
Death Row inmates require counsel----John Nixon's life should be spared.
Perspective Editor Sid Salter laments the fact that Nixon has been on
eeath row for 20 years not because he has any sympathy for Nixon, but
because he believes the state should have executed him long ago ("Nixon's
death row odyssey is a pathetic joke," Nov. 16 column).
But ironically, Salter actually reveals the main reason why Nixon's life
should be spared by conceding that Mississippi does not "provide for a
state indigent defense system that verifiably provides competent counsel
for murder defendants that is comparable to the state trial court
prosecutorial system...."
Nixon, and the vast majority of Death Row inmates who grew up poor, did
not receive adequate counsel.
In fact, Nixon's initial trial lawyers did not present any mitigating
evidence at the sentencing phase to counter the state's aggravating
evidence.
If they had done their job effectively, Nixon's lawyers would have
revealed to the jury that Nixon served in both the Navy and the Army
during World War II and received honorable discharges for his enlistments;
they would have lauded the fact that Nixon pulled a woman from the burning
wreckage of a plane crash and saved a drowning boy from an irrigation
ditch; and they would have asked the jury for sympathy for a man who
suffered from a severe passive-aggressive personality disorder and who had
witnessed and suffered repeated beatings by his alcoholic father.
But the jury didn't hear any of this evidence because his attorneys never
presented it.
It has taken 20 years for Nixon's sentence to get this close to the point
of execution for good reason - the same reason why his sentence should be
commuted to life imprisonment.
Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel----Jackson
(source: Letter to the Editor, Jackson Clarion-Ledger)
CALIFORNIA:
Should we kill this Crip?----Governor, let Tookie live
In deciding whether Stanley Tookie Williams should die Dec. 13 for
murdering four people, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's unenviable task is to
play God. The question he must answer is whether Williams' reformation
during the last 16 years is sufficient to let him live out his life in
prison.
The "old Tookie," circa 1979, shot 7-Eleven employee Albert Owens in the
back of the head, execution-style, during a robbery. 2 weeks later, he
murdered 3 members of the Yang family while robbing their motel business.
Then there is the "new Tookie," circa 1989 to the present. Returning to
death row after more than 6 years of solitary confinement, Williams wrote
children's books advocating nonviolence and alternatives to gangs, and an
autobiography. In 2004, he helped broker a peace agreement, known as the
Tookie Protocol for Peace, to end one of the deadliest gang wars in the
country. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize multiple times.
The law is silent on which Williams the governor should judge, though the
long appellate process has morphed a murderer into a peacemaker. But
Schwarzenegger can look to the law to make a decision.
The governor has twice considered - and twice denied - clemency for death
row inmates. The Williams case is complicated because his accomplishments
are dramatic and their effects measurable.
Jonathan Harris, a lawyer working for Williams, asks: If he is not granted
clemency based on his personal redemption and the thousands of people he
has positively touched, who would you give it to?
Although affirming Williams' conviction and death sentence, the U.S. 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals took the unprecedented step of urging the
governor to seriously consider a clemency petition from Williams.
The state's district attorneys, victims rights groups, sheriffs and police
chiefs demand that Williams be executed for what a jury said he did: the
murder of 4 people, for which the jury set the penalty as death, not life
without parole.
Schwarzenegger should reweigh the penalty-phase evidence based on what is
known about Williams now, as opposed to then.
A death penalty case is divided into the guilt phase and the penalty
phase. In finding Williams guilty of 4 murders, a jury determined that he
would receive either a sentence of death or life in prison without the
possibility of parole.
In the penalty phase, the jury recommends a sentence. I have argued eight
death-penalty phases, and there is nothing in law more weighty and
terrifying than pleading for a man's life. My opening statement is always
the same:
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have already determined by your
guilt-phase verdict that my client will die in prison and be buried in an
unmarked pauper's grave outside the prison's gates. The only remaining
question is whether the defendant's death should occur at a time chosen by
God, or a time chosen by you."
The evidence presented during the penalty phase is unique in law. The
prosecution offers evidence of aggravating factors - why the jury should
order the defendant put to death - and the defense puts forth evidence of
mitigating factors - why the jury should decide in favor of life without
parole. The question for the jury is often whether the defendant's life
has any redeeming worth: Has this guy done anything that warrants keeping
him alive?
Williams was represented by attorney Joe Ingber, my co-counsel in my 1st
death-penalty case in 1984.
Ingber offered no mitigating evidence at Williams' penalty-phase trial.
The California Supreme Court, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson and
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Ingber performed
competently in choosing not to mount a penalty-phase defense, one
suspects, because there was not much of one to present.
Schwarzenegger should seriously consider the mitigating evidence that has
arisen since Williams was sentenced to death. If Ingber could have
presented evidence that Williams would be nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize multiple times, that he would write anti-gang children's books and
negotiate the end to a gang war, it is reasonable to believe that the jury
might have found sufficient value in Williams' life to spare him death.
The controversy over Williams' execution echoes that of rapist Caryl
Chessman in 1960. Chessman wrote 4 popular books about his conviction and
imprisonment while on death row. Students in Lisbon, Portugal, rioted in
protest of one of his eventual 9 execution dates. It is commonly thought
that then-Gov. Pat Brown suffered politically when he refused to stay
Chessman's execution in 1960. Brown defeated Richard Nixon in 1962 to win
a second term.
Still, to his death, Brown, a former district attorney and attorney
general, felt that his refusal to ignore politics and commute Chessman's
sentence to life in prison was his greatest personal failure.
(source: Opinion, Charles L. Lindner, past president of the Los Angeles
Criminal Bar Assn., has tried many capital cases, 8 of which went to the
penalty phase. He has 1 client on death row; Los Angeles Times)
********************
Should we kill this Crip?----He's a murderer. He should die.
There are heartfelt moral and religious reasons to oppose capital
punishment, but holding up Stanley Tookie Williams as a symbol of
redemption is absurd and obscene.
It is especially offensive to his victims' families, whose names the
celebrities championing his cause probably don't know. News coverage
rarely mentions Albert Owens or the Yang family, all gunned down by
Williams in a series of crimes in 1979. The Crips' reputed co-founder also
bears moral responsibility for the deaths of countless young black men.
Williams told the BBC in a 2003 interview that his imprisonment is the
result of "bad karma." He is more right than he probably intended. Karma
is the consequence of choices freely made. Williams chose death for a lot
of people, without justice, without appeal, without consideration of
anything other than his totalitarian goals.
Stripped of his celebrity, Williams isn't much different from the more
than 600 men on California's death row. He killed multiple victims, he has
never taken responsibility for his crimes, and he has had decades to fight
his death sentence.
Not only did he brag to his brother about the dying anguish of Owens, but
after slaughtering the Yang family, he boasted to fellow gang members he
had killed "some buddhaheads." His true distinction comes only in his
possibly being the second African American among the 12 people the state
of California has executed in the last 35 years.
According to a Gallup poll in May, nearly 75% of Americans support capital
punishment for murderers. There are some murderers so heinous and so evil
that removing them is the measure of the severity of their violation of
the social contract. Williams qualifies.
Religious, artistic and academic elites that most vociferously oppose
capital punishment are the least affected by violent crime. They
invariably avoid discussion of the toll homicide takes on victims, their
survivors and the communities hardest hit by murder - people of color and
the poor. A black man in the United States is 7 times more likely to be a
victim of homicide than a white man.
So what makes Williams deserving of the extraordinary benefit of
commutation? We are asked to believe that because he has coauthored some
children's books he has "reformed." Yet he refuses to do what we morally
and legally expect even from shoplifters: to express remorse for his
actions. His true legacy may lie with his children. His namesake, Stanley
Williams Jr., is doing time in another California prison for second-degree
murder.
Williams claims he discourages kids from getting involved in gang life,
yet a San Quentin official recently suggested that he still orchestrates
gang activity outside the prison, according to an Associated Press story.
In his 2004 memoir, he refused to back off the code against "snitching,"
in which identifying a drive-by shooter is considered a worse sin than
shooting a 4-year-old in the head with a Tech-9.
The clamor for Williams' clemency may persuade Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
to dispense mercy to him, something Williams never gave Owens, the Yangs
or any of the thousands of people the Crips have killed, maimed or
terrorized.
But clemency for Williams will not advance serious discussion of the
merits of capital punishment. Nor will it succeed in silencing the distant
voices of the victims who never make the headlines except as a footnote to
the saga of a gang lord adopted by the glitterati.
Williams' case recalls that of Norman Mailer and his friends, who
"adopted" killer/writer Jack Henry Abbott. After Mailer and others secured
his release from prison, Abbott stabbed and killed a young aspiring actor.
If his sentence is commuted, Williams will be an even shinier icon to the
thugs who follow his example into violence and incarceration. He will roam
in the general prison population, while his disciples stalk California's
streets and malls.
(source: Opinion, Joshua Marquis, district attorney of Clatsop County,
Ore., is vice president of the National District Attorneys Assn. and
coauthor of "Debating the Death Penalty."--Los Angeles Times)
******************
Harkin urges clemency for death row inmate
Sen. Tom Harkin is among those who have signed a petition urging that the
state of California not execute a convicted murderer named Stanley Tookie
Williams.
Williams was the co-founder of the Crips gang, and he was convicted in the
1979 murder of 4 people, a crime he denies. His supporters say that since
he's been in prison, he has worked to end gang violence through writing
books and taping videos.
He's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and a number of Hollywood
celebrities, including actor Jamie Foxx and rapper Snoop Dogg, have joined
the drive for clemency for Williams, according to the Associated Press.
The AP also said that Mike Farrell, a star in the TV series "M*A*S*H" and
an opponent of the death penalty, gathered signatures on a petition
supporting Williams. Harkin was among those who signed. So did singer
Bonnie Raitt and actor Russell Crowe.
"Senator Harkin is opposed to the death penalty," said Allison Dobson, his
press secretary.
On the other hand, there are those who believe that Williams is an
unrepentant killer of an innocent 7-Eleven clerk, as well as a motel
proprietor, his wife and daughter in a second brutal incident. "All this
agitation is on behalf of a man whose bestial specialty was the
close-range shotgun blast," wrote Rich Lowry in National Review Online.
Williams is on death row and is scheduled to die by lethal injection on
Dec. 13, so the next move appears to be up to California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
(source: Des Moines Register)
***********************
MEASURE OF A MANS LIFE A A REDEEMER----Questions of redemption, atonement
and clemency swirl as Stanley Tookie Williams execution date approaches
A .45-caliber bullet didn't lead Diego Garcia to give up the violent gang
life he had known for years. Stanley Tookie Williams did.
Garcia, who grew up in the housing projects on Richmond's Easter Hill,
joined a gang at age 9 and took part in drug deals, beatings and drive-by
shootings before he was shot when he was 18. Months of recovery gave him
plenty of time to think about making changes.
"I was completely confused. I didn't know whether I should choose the
right path," said Garcia, now 30. "I read Tookie's books and it inspired
me. I related to him. The books are different because it is the co-founder
of the Crips giving you a message. Tookie caught my attention."
Williams is scheduled to be executed at San Quentin State Prison Dec. 13
for the shotgun murders of 4 people in the Los Angeles area in 1979. He
maintains he is innocent, an assertion no court has agreed with, and now
his lawyers are pinning their hopes on a clemency hearing Thursday before
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
His attorneys and the high-profile figures who have been drawn to
Williams' cause -- including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, rapper Snoop Dogg and
celebrities such as Jamie Foxx and Bianca Jagger -- say Williams is worth
more alive than dead. He has co-authored 10 books from death row laying
out the evils of gangs, many of them directed at children, spoken by phone
at anti-violence summits, and lent his name to an Internet peace project
that links disadvantaged youths around the world.
"He is such a well-known member of the Crips that he is held in high
esteem," said Alfonso Valdez, an investigator with the Orange County
district attorney's office and expert on California gangs. "I have spoken
to kids who consider him a demigod, a very high-ranking gang member. That
means they listen to him."
Garcia, who now works with underprivileged students in Richmond, says he
is living proof of Williams' ability to persuade gang members that the
criminal life is not the way to go.
"Stanley changed my life," he said.
Those opposed to clemency say Williams should not be promoted as a role
model, that he is an unrepentant criminal who should be executed for his
crimes.
"His work doesn't mitigate the fact that he killed four people and started
a gang that is still killing, dealing drugs and committing other crimes,"
said Jane Alexander, co-founder of Citizens Against Homicide, a Marin
County support group for the families of homicide victims. "We want the
execution to go on as planned."
Crusade to change lives
Williams, 51, started his public crusade against violence in a hotel
ballroom in 1993. He had already spent 12 years on Death Row after being
convicted of murdering Albert Owens, a clerk at a Whittier (Los Angeles
County) 7-Eleven store, in a February 1979 robbery, and the owners of a
Los Angeles motel, Yen-I Yang and Tsai-Shai Yang, and their adult
daughter, Yee-Chen Lin, during another robbery 12 days later.
Hundreds of gang members who had gathered in the Los Angeles ballroom for
a peace summit called Hands Across Watts watched a videotape Williams had
filmed in a San Quentin visiting room.
Williams admitted he had helped build the Crips, a vicious Los Angeles
gang, and said he regretted having done so. He said he was going to spend
the rest of his life trying to persuade other gang members to change.
"I told them I never thought I could change my life, that I thought I
would be a Crip forever," Williams said last week during an interview at
San Quentin. "But I developed common sense, wisdom and knowledge. I
changed.
Tony Muhammad, a minister with the Nation of Islam, remembers that day.
"I saw tears rolling down those young people's eyes after they watched
that video," he said. "It was deep. Many of us who are free can't affect
the gang culture the way he does."
The gang members' reactions convinced many that Williams could help save
lives, and his work in the following years convinced more. Supporters say
his renunciation of violence and the "Tookie Speaks Out" and "Life in
Prison" books he wrote from his 4-by-9-foot cell are deterring youth from
entering gangs and entitle him to mercy.
Early years in prison
Williams' 1st decade at San Quentin scarcely hinted at the reform he and
his followers say he has undergone. He spent six years in solitary
confinement for bad behavior that included fighting with inmates and
threatening to assault staff.
Williams says he spent his time in solitary reading the dictionary,
studying philosophy, psychology and black history. He found God in "the
hole," and considers himself a member of many religions. His first series
of books was published in 1996, and the following year the www.tookie.com
Web site was launched. In 1998, "Life in Prison," intended for teenagers,
was published, and the Internet Project for Street Peace started in 2000.
Williams' autobiography and a movie about his life, "Redemption," starring
Foxx, were both released in 2004.
His supporters say thousands of children have been rescued thanks to
Williams' books. It's a tough point to prove, however, at least by looking
at crime rates.
George Tita, an assistant professor of criminology at UC Irvine who has
done extensive research on homicide rates in Watts and surrounding areas,
says there are no numbers showing that killings declined as a result of
the numerous gang peace summits held since the early 1990s.
"The gang peace summits have not had an impact on the levels of violence
in Los Angeles, but that doesn't mean they don't have great value," Tita
said. As for Williams, he said, youths "look at him as a role model, not
for the old Tookie Williams but the new one. His books and message are
important for the community, but there is no statistical evidence to show
that they have changed murder rates."
His backers insist they've seen the proof in those who read Williams'
books.
"I can tell you what it is like, but I've never been in a gang," said
Jorja Leap, an adjunct professor at UCLA who has researched gang
intervention for 20 years. "He is a role model for people who are thinking
about leaving the gang life. He has credibility because he lived that
life. The books are a building block in their survival."
Books reach children
The books are used in a number of classrooms around the country and
elsewhere. In the Chicago public school district, 25 campuses with at-risk
students have created a class using Williams' autobiography as the
curriculum.
To get that program started, Williams talked via telephone with Chicago
principals, answered questions and gave them advice for handling kids
involved with gangs. Then, more than 250 7th- and 8th-grade boys with life
circumstances similar to Williams' were picked for the program. Its
facilitators, described as motivated and encouraging, use lesson plans and
activities based on Williams' writings.
Carole Ward Allen, a professor in Laney College's black studies
department, said she uses Williams' autobiography "because I like the fact
that he has made a change. My goal is to keep kids in education and on the
straight track.
"I am working with kids from the hip-hop generation," Allen said. "Tookie
has an impact because he spans 35 years of gang life."
Language of the street
Williams' "Tookie Speaks Out" series, aimed at elementary school children,
uses street language and glossaries explaining words such as homeboy
(friend or partner), mobbing (large numbers of kids pushing to get what
they want) and enemy (someone who wants to hurt you).
Williams tells his young readers that the power that came with being in a
gang ended up hurting him. He writes about how it feels to lose friends to
gunfire, how he suffered from a gunshot wound to his leg, how guns don't
prove you are tough. He talks about his 1st fight and the pressures that
pushed him to join up with criminals.
"I grew up poor and wanted a lot of things that other kids had," Williams
wrote. "Most of my homeboys were poor too. We would gang-bang to get what
our parents couldn't afford to buy us. But now I know it's better to have
less of the things you want than to get them by stealing, selling drugs or
hurting others."
"Life in Prison," aimed at a high school audience, tells of the
humiliation of being strip-searched in jail, the claustrophobia that comes
with living in a cell and the violence of everyday prison life.
Jessie Muldoon, a teacher at Roosevelt Middle School in East Oakland, uses
Williams' books, movie and Web site regularly for classroom discussions.
"The kids are now following the case on a day-to-day basis," she said.
"They are interested because of the gang element. They are not necessarily
in gangs, but know people who are.
"To know he has turned himself around from inside prison is not lost on
them," Muldoon said. "They pass the books and newspaper articles around."
Writing coach
Williams has authored 9 of his books with Barbara Becnel. The two met in
January 1993 when she was writing a story about Los Angeles gangs for
Essence magazine. She says that at the time she thought he was guilty --
she has since changed her mind -- but the 1993 peace summit convinced her
that his message was worth sharing.
"I was watching those kids and how they were entranced by him, and a
lightbulb went off in my head," Becnel said. "I knew he could save lives.
I got over my moral dilemma that day. I had an obligation, for my son and
my grandson and all the African American males in my family."
Williams formed the Crips in 1970 with his friend Raymond Washington. He
admits being involved with drugs and fighting, but not to the killings
that sent him to San Quentin. He says he never imagined the gang would
grow to its current size, and says that once the Crips moved from fists to
guns, the violence spiraled out of control.
"As a result of Williams' actions, this gang is now active throughout the
United States, as well as other countries across the globe," the Los
Angeles County district attorney wrote in asking Schwarzenegger to deny
Williams' request for clemency. "This gang is responsible for the regular
commission of crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and drug sales."
Valdez, the gang expert, said Williams was one of the original members of
the Crips and recruited others to the gang. However, he said, not all
Crips fall under the same umbrella.
"Stanley helped start it and then it snowballed," Valdez said. "African
American gangs decided to use the blue color, but were independent. Crips
have always been a conglomeration of different sets or cliques that fly
the blue color."
Williams said in his prison interview that "blaming me for all the gang
activity is like blaming all white people for slavery or racial profiling.
It is absurd to hold one man responsible."
Execution draws near
As Williams' execution date approaches, supporters' efforts to save him
are growing more frantic. The NAACP plans a tour of California in the days
before the clemency hearing. There are scheduled showings of "Redemption"
and planned rallies in front of the governor's office. A round-the-clock
vigil at the San Quentin gates will start today.
At least some of that interest has been stirred by the 5 Nobel Peace Prize
nominations Williams has garnered since 2000. The 1st nomination was the
work of Mario Fehr, a member of the Swiss Parliament and critic of the
death penalty who says his goal in part was to get people talking about
the case.
Those who are unimpressed by Williams note that any professor of social
science, history, philosophy, law or theology can make a nomination for
the prize. There are about 150 names submitted each year.
The nominations, along with his Internet project, have earned Williams
worldwide recognition. He says he gets 20 to 30 letters a day from
supporters and children who have read his work.
"I can't respond to them all," he said. "So I deal with the ones who are
in pain and need immediate help. It's part of my redemption."
(source: San Francisco Chronicle)
