Dec. 5
TEXAS: Gunman could face death penalty In Fort Worth, prosecutors are likely to seek the death penalty against the man accused of fatally shooting a Fort Worth police officer, said David Montague, a spokesman for the Tarrant County District Attorneys Office. But officials won't make a final decision until they complete a standard review process, which could take months, Montague said Monday. Stephen L. Heard, 39, of Fort Worth has been formally charged with capital murder and aggravated kidnapping in connection with the shooting. Heard, who remained in the Tarrant County Jail on Monday, has acknowledged shooting officer Henry "Hank" Nava, 39, in the head as Nava searched for him inside a northwest Fort Worth mobile home. Heard said he believed that Nava was someone coming to rob him. "The last time we had a capital murder involving a police officer shot in the line of duty that we prosecuted in Tarrant County was the 1983 murder of a deputy sheriff," Montague said. "We sought the death penalty. We got a death penalty and that defendant has since been executed. "That continues to be the philosophy of this office." The review process includes delving into a suspects criminal history and mental health issues and holding discussions with a victims family, Montague said. "The purpose of the review process is to determine if there are any extenuating circumstances or extraordinary circumstances that would dictate we should not seek a death penalty," he said. "Other than that, well continue to follow our philosophy." After the shooting, Heard held a 26-year-old woman hostage during an almost 3-hour stand-off with police following last week's shooting. Nava, who died Thursday evening, is the 1st Fort Worth police officer to die in the line of duty since 1994. Officer Jesse Don Moorman, 47, suffered a fatal heart attack while chasing a burglary suspect. (source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram) KANSAS: Kline To Argue For State's Death Penalty Law Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline will plead the state's case this week before the highest court in the land, asking that the U.S. Supreme Court uphold the state's death penalty. Kline will make his arguments Wednesday in Washington. He is seeking a reversal of a decision by the Kansas Supreme Court, which held that the state's 1994 death penalty law was unconstitutional. A key question is whether the state's law gives equal protection to those convicted of murder. The Kansas court struck down the law, saying the state statute is skewed in favor of a sentence of death. Kline will argue that the law has been adapted following an earlier state court ruling and that it is balanced, giving equal weight to aggravating and mitigating circumstances. A jury uses those circumstances in determining if a convicted person is sentenced to death or life in prison. (source: KMBC-TV News) USA: New rules needed for death penalty New evidence emerges daily verifying what most of us have long suspected: Innocent persons have been put to death in this country for crimes they didn't commit. We probably will never know how many of the nearly 1,000 executed since 1976 when capital punishment was reinstated by the Supreme Court were not actually guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted. But just one would be excessive. Does this mean that the penalty should be abolished entirely? More and more Americans seem to think so, according to recent polls that show support for the supreme punishment has declined from 3/4 to 2/3 in the wake of increasing doubts about mistakes. That number drops to close to 50 percent when the alternative of life in prison without parole is suggested. There is no arguing that in any number of death-penalty cases, juries, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys have shown a fallibility that is frightening in its implications. Juries are easily manipulated by slick prosecutors looking for new scalps; many judges on the local level, where most of the murder cases are tried, reveal an amazing ignorance about reasonable doubt and other safeguards; and defense attorneys too often give capital cases for which they frequently are paid very little by indigent clients or stingy courts a mere swipe of jurisprudence. Circumstantial evidence frequently rules the day, and even when there are eyewitnesses, their identifications are sketchy and suspect. Recanting testimony has become normal. The time between sentencing and execution is often beyond ludicrous. The average death-row stay is something like 18 years. Stanley "Tookie" Williams, founder of the notorious Los Angeles Crips, has been awaiting execution in California for more than 24 years, convicted of murders in two robberies. In that time, he has written children's books, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has been a persuasive voice against the gang violence he helped start. He is nearing the end of his time unless Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger steps in, as a number of celebrities have pleaded. Should we tell him that he has done well and then kill him? But then, it is fair to ask, what should be done to those who have committed sickeningly heinous acts and about which there is absolutely no doubt of their guilt, including confessions that show no evidence of being coerced? What about the BTK (Bind, Torture and Kill) creature who worked a deal to save his miserable hide or any number of misanthropic sociopaths who have managed to wangle a life behind bars at taxpayer expense? Should there be a special category for them? There are no easy answers. Capital punishment in many ways is as barbaric as the crime committed and utterly contrary to the claims of civility by the society that imposes it. Yet some form of it seems absolutely necessary to maintaining law and order. The very threat of death obviously deters some and forces others to admit to their crimes. Police and prosecutors have solved any number of outstanding mysteries by using the extreme penalty as a bargaining chip. These factors alone are enough to support its continuation. Only when one adds the need to eradicate society's most noxious weeds for the protection of the common good is capital punishment justifiable. This should be coupled with a set of inviolate and uniformly mandated standards for safeguarding the innocent. Any DNA at a crime scene should be instantly tested without consideration of cost. Police interrogations and witness identifications should be rigorously supervised. Lab work should be reviewed at least once. Videos should be employed from the moment of arrest. In too many cases, the system's reluctance to reopen a case translates to an unwillingness to admit a mistake. Some states seem not to feel any remorse in the possibility of putting to death an innocent person. But even in these places there seems to be a growing recognition that government is also capable of committing a crime. (source: Opinion, Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service) CALIFORNIA: Californians Conflicted on Williams' Fate If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is feeling conflicted as he weighs life or death in the case of Stanley Tookie Williams, he is not alone. Bill Knox opposes capital punishment because he believes it has not "been handled fairly over the decades - especially in the minority communities." Still, the law is the law. If Schwarzenegger believes, after Thursday's clemency hearing, that Williams deserves to die for the 1979 murders of four people, "then he has to carry out the sentence," said Knox, a 57-year-old retired corporate executive in Danville, an affluent suburb east of San Francisco. "I don't personally like it, but I have to separate myself from a bigger system," he said. Just over Altamont Pass, dotted with churning windmills and grazing cows, Joe Cisneros is equally torn. He supports the death penalty "to a certain extent." But the Williams case is a hard one, he says. "What he's doing, writing books, trying to keep future generations out of gangs - that type of a figure kids might want to listen to," said the 58-year-old Cisneros, who has operated a hair salon in downtown Tracy for nearly 30 years. On the other hand, he said, "You've got to show these gangbangers if you do the crime, you've got to pay for it." Cisneros finally threw his hands in the air, literally, his palms facing the ceiling. "When you're in that position like Arnold is, it's a tough one," Cisneros concluded. "I can't make that judgment call. I just can't." Deciding whether someone should live or die with the sanction of the state cannot be an easy thing. Schwarzenegger has already said he dreads deciding whether to let the Dec. 13 execution go forward. But although the judgment will not hinge on politics, the choice is particularly fraught for Schwarzenegger as he seeks to recover from last month's disastrous special election and runs for a 2nd term next year. Abandoned by a large swath of the state's Democratic-leaning electorate, Republican Schwarzenegger has worked to reclaim his centrist image by aggressively reaching out to old adversaries, even going so far as naming a longtime Democratic activist, Susan Kennedy, as his new chief of staff. Granting clemency to Williams "would fit in with that kind of new characterization" of the governor as a more "humane, caring individual," said Larry N. Gerston, a San Jose State political scientist. And yet blocking Williams' execution could further antagonize conservatives already outraged by Kennedy's appointment and Schwarzenegger's talk of huge new borrowing to pay for improved roads, ports and other infrastructure projects. "If he blinks on this issue, does he perhaps add more fuel to that fire and open the possibility for a primary fight?" Gerston asked. But public opinion on the matter appears shaded with nuance. In polls taken over roughly the last decade, a majority of Californians have consistently said they support the death penalty for serious crimes. At the same time, some surveys have also found strong support for an alternative sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. A series of random interviews around the state last week - in politically competitive areas reflecting California as a whole - found similar ambivalence among nearly four dozen individuals who agreed to discuss their views on Schwarzenegger, capital punishment and the choice the governor faces. Supporters of the death penalty expressed concern about its application, citing cases of innocent men being freed from death row on the basis of new DNA evidence. Opponents questioned whether it was fair that Williams' fame - Jamie Foxx starred in a movie based on his life and has joined other celebrities in taking up his cause - has given him a shot at clemency that others were denied. Lance Leber seemed to be a walking embodiment of on-the-one-hand, on-the-other sentiment. "If someone hurt my family, I'd be quite upset. I don't know what kind of reaction I'd have," said the lanky 33-year-old, a wine shop owner and part-time disc jockey in Livermore, on the far eastern reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area. "It matters if he's 100% guilty or not. There's some things I've heard that this guy's done some major repentance. But even with that - does that really matter?" Weighing vengeance and mercy as he stood in the middle of a strip mall parking lot on a cold, blustery day, Leber finally said, "I just don't think the death penalty would be the right solution in this case. There's too much controversy." There were plenty of people who had no doubt, one way or the other - among them Marie Retti, a 56-year-old cattle rancher who was slinging 20-pound bags of cat food into her faded red pickup nearby. "Didn't he kill 4 people? Didn't he influence a lot of people to kill a lot of other people?" Retti said of Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang. "I think evil is evil, and I don't think people change." 400 miles to the south, in the bluff-top suburbs north of San Diego, Marge Benton said much the same thing. "Right is right and wrong is wrong, and an eye for an eye," the 81-year-old retiree said after a worker at Solana Beach's Dixieline Lumber loaded starter logs into the trunk of her white Lexus. "If you kill somebody, you have to pay the price." Although Benton is a fan of the governor and King opposed the recall that carried Schwarzenegger to office, opinions about Williams did not always divide neatly along partisan lines. Around the corner at the Pleasanton mall, Democrat Jesus Romero questioned the sincerity of Williams' jailhouse crusade against violence. "I've seen him in interviews. I've seen the books that he's written," Romero, 31, a juvenile counselor, said as he strained to keep an eye on his rambunctious 2-year-old, Isaac. "He's done a lot of bad. He's trying to do good, but in a way I think he's just trying to save himself." Conversely, although Republican Chris Rudd was hazy on the facts in Williams' case, he confessed to being "a little ambivalent" when it comes to the death penalty in general. "Without really solid evidence, I know that juries make mistakes," the 72-year-old retired metal parts salesman said as he waited to meet a buddy for breakfast at an International House of Pancakes in Glendale. "Sad to say, we all do." Whatever Schwarzenegger's decision, there was little sense among voters questioned last week that it would haunt him politically. Many said they empathized with the difficulty the governor faces, and more than a few said they were glad it was his responsibility and not theirs. Even some of those who felt strongly one way or the other said they could understand the governor's reaching a different conclusion. "The death penalty is like abortion," said Sherry Cain, 61, as she stopped by Dixieline Lumber to pick up some poinsettias. "It's a real personal issue and it's very difficult." Although opinions were decidedly mixed on whether Schwarzenegger deserves reelection, not one of those interviewed said they would base their decision on his actions in Williams' clemency case. Kathy Kindred, the 43-year-old owner of K2 Knits Yarn Salon in Tracy, is a staunch Schwarzenegger backer and proponent of the death penalty. "If he did take the lives of 4, I think he should pay for it, no matter how good," Kindred said of Williams as she smoked a cigarette in front of her shop on a downtown side street. "I think there is a trend in our society now where we make excuses for things. This gentleman, Tookie Williams, obviously reacted by turning over a new leaf. But he still should be responsible for what he did," she said. That said, if Schwarzenegger allows Williams to live out his life behind bars, Kindred still plans to vote to give the governor a 2nd term. "I elect somebody not to have to watchdog them. I elect them on their overall campaign," Kindred said. "Some things Schwarzenegger has done I don't agree with. But I'm going to do things that people don't agree with." (source: Los Angeles Times) ***************** What Tookie's tale teaches us In a candid and revealing moment, Stanley "Tookie" Williams told a visitor at San Quentin State Prison in California that he helped found the notorious Crips street gang because he wanted to smash everyone, make a rep and get respect and dignity, and that he wanted his name to be known everywhere. He got his wish in more ways than he ever dreamed of. The demons that drove Mr. Williams in his reckless push for identity and prominence also drove him to become the nation's best-known condemned prisoner. He faces execution by lethal injection at San Quentin on Dec. 13 for multiple murders. Mr. Williams' revelatory glimpse into his thug past tells much about the anger, alienation and desperation that have turned legions of young black men into social pariahs and that propel them to wreak murder and mayhem in mostly poor, black communities. But today's Tookies didn't crop up from nowhere. The transformation in the early 1970s of the old-line civil rights groups into business and professional organizations and black middle-class flight from the inner city neighborhoods left the black poor, especially young black males, socially fragmented, politically rudderless and economically destitute. Lacking visible role models of success and achievement or competitive technical skills and professional training to compete in a rapidly shifting economy, they were shoved even further to the outer margins of American society. Yet the Tookies instinctively know that the material goodies suspended before them in movies, on TV and in advertisements are the primary measures of an individual's worth in a consumer-obsessed culture. They desperately want them, but they know that in many cases they can't attain them, at least not legally. This increases their frustration and anger. The American dream may be a dream deferred, but it's still a dream that many spend their lives in futile pursuit of. That alone doesn't explain the inner rage that consumes many poor young black males. They are in a pathetic hunt to live up to the perverse and distorted image of manhood that American society reserves for white men and denies black males. Far too many young black males have become especially adept at acting out their frustrations at society's denial of their "manhood" by adopting an exaggerated "tough guy" role. They swagger, boast, curse, fight and commit violent self-destructive acts. Their tattoos, signs, code language, dress, gaudy colors, graffiti-tagged walls, drug dealing and gunplay are a ritual part of the identity and power quest that once pushed Mr. Williams to the streets. The accessibility of drugs and guns and the influence of violent-laced rap songs also reinforced the deep feeling among many youths that life is cheap, expendable and easy to take. In far too many cases, police and city officials throw up their hands in despair or play down the crime and violence they commit as long as their victims are other blacks. The exception is when there's a loud and pained outcry from residents over an especially heinous and outrageous killing. The body count of unsolved homicides in predominantly black neighborhoods in Mr. Williams' old South Los Angeles haunts numbers in the hundreds. The pattern is similar in other cities. Police say it's because the witnesses and victims' relatives and friends won't cooperate, but often they do and arrests still aren't made. When they are, the punishment appears less severe than the punishment meted out to blacks if the victims were not black. The 4 people Mr. Williams is convicted of killing were white and Asian. The sense among young black males that their lives are severely marginalized fosters disrespect for the law and implants the troubling notion that they have an open license to pillage and plunder their community. Mr. Williams was long gone from the scene by the time the Crips devolved and morphed into the hundreds of factions nationally, and internationally, that have since become major players in the gun and drug plague. The memory of the thug life that Mr. Williams helped spawn, as much as the public demand by the authorities that he pay with his life for the murders he was convicted of, is why Mr. Williams is still roundly condemned by many. But Mr. Williams feels deeply responsible for the Frankenstein monster that he helped create and has profusely and openly apologized to the families of the victims of gang violence in letters and taped messages. His contrition is not too little, too late, but it is still slight consolation to the victims that his violent quest for identity and manhood claimed. The Mr. Williams that thousands are fighting to keep from a date with the executioner is not the same Mr. Williams who decades ago wanted to smash everyone. Yet there are still thousands like him that do. A very much alive Mr. Williams who understands their anger and alienation could help lesson their numbers. (source: Op-Ed, Baltimore Sun; Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a political analyst and social issues commentator, is the author of "The Crisis in Black and Black.") ********************** DEATH AND JUSTICE----A stupid waste; It's foolish to execute a man who represents a real opportunity to break the cycle of gang violence. I met Stanley Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang, at San Quentin. Several times we sat locked together in a metal cage and talked, sharing food I'd purchase from the vending machines. He's the same age I am, early 50s, a big man gone gray at the temples. You can see how imposing he'd have been in his youth. Now he's surprisingly soft-spoken, picks his words carefully, has a writer's ear for language. Before meeting him, I'd read several of his books. "Life In Prison" is an unsentimental account of his surroundings. It is aimed at young adults, aimed directly at dissuading them of romantic notions they might hold about the place. It is knowingly and beautifully written. His children's book series, written just a few notches above the "see Spot run" level, are deceptively simple. At first you can't believe he'd be addressing the grim subjects - coping with violence and drugs and fear and conformity - to 4th-graders. Then you realize, as Stan did, that if you don't reach his intended audience at that age, the gangs will have gotten there first. All this was research for the TV movie I wrote about Stan Williams "Redemption" - whose premiere attracted many of the people, Snoop Dogg among them, now calling on the governor to commute Stan's death sentence. I interviewed Stan to understand him as a character. In doing so, I came to see him as a man, which is why I count myself among those who believe that his prison conversion was real. I also believe, as Father Greg Boyle, director of Homeboy Industries, has said, that Stan is "not the person he was 27 years ago, and if he is granted clemency, his impact on kids, who plan their funerals and not their futures, will continue." This is more important than most people from privileged backgrounds seem to understand - more important than I understood going into the project. L.A. County prosecutors, among others, say "Williams deserves to die for his crimes and for helping start a gang that has claimed thousands of lives over the years." Although there is more than one account of the Crips' genesis, Stan himself says he was a co-founder of the gang, and no one, least of all him, denies that this was a bad thing. But he's on death row because a jury convicted him of four murders, period. Justice needs to be specific. If the prosecutors want him killed for starting the Crips, they need to bring charges, go to trial and get a conviction. The truth is, a new type of street gang was emerging in Los Angeles' poor neighborhoods in the early 1970s, and a Crips-like cancer, with its culture of retaliation and blood vengeance, would have spread with or without Stan Williams. Law enforcement officials say that Stan's redemption can't be real because he refuses to participate with corrections officials in "debriefing" sessions about gang members. Does this really signal "no redemption" and "no atonement"? Last month, one prisoner killed another in the lunch line at the L.A. County Jail. How long do you think Stan Williams would last in San Quentin, surrounded by Crips, if he started cooperating? His chances of surviving lethal injection are probably greater. So it's disingenuous to say his lack of cooperation signals anything but a desire to live. The district attorney has said that the evidence against Stan is "overwhelming." To most of us, that means something like several eyewitnesses, a confession made to a pair of detectives, a crime weapon found in the possession of the suspect, the suspect's fingerprints on the weapon, a slam-dunk ballistics test tying the weapon to the crime. In Stan's case, there was none of the above. Stan has said, "I will never apologize for capital crimes that I did not commit." One of the downsides of being a criminal is that people forever after doubt your word. And generally that's not a bad rule of thumb. But a study on the death penalty done at Northwestern University, showed that about 6% of death row inmates in Illinois were later exonerated. Which indicates that at least some of the guys claiming they didn't do it, really didn't do it. So even if you believe in the death penalty and don't believe Stan Williams, there is, statistically, a chance that the guy's telling the truth. The families of the murder victims - the Owenses, the Yangs - have lost what is irreplaceable. The reporting in this paper alone of their pain and their sorrow and doubts has been searing to read. Perhaps I'm wrong and they do have a right to more than keeping a guy in jail for the rest of his life. Perhaps they do have a right to blood vengeance as administered by the state of California. And maybe the state will get lucky and kill the right guy. But the state will also be killing a man who, guilty or innocent, is now doing far more good than harm. Critics say that all this do-gooding is just a way for Stan to save his skin. My experience with the guy says no, he really does want to spare mothers and brothers the agony faced by the Owenses and Yangs. In writing "Redemption," I met many young men at risk of joining street gangs. These young men will not listen to me, will not listen to you, will not listen to George W. Bush. But they will listen to - and perhaps be moved and motivated by - Stan Williams. This prisoner offers California a rare resource with which to interrupt the cycle that produces crop after crop of killer Crips. To squander that opportunity in an effort to eliminate one former Crip - who may be innocent of the murders for which he was convicted - would be plain stupid. (source: Opinion, J.T. Allen, authored the screenplay for "Redemption," starring Jamie Foxx and Lynn Whitfield)
