Dec. 7
CALIFORNIA:
Debating death
Back in the mid-1980s, when more than 80 percent of the nation approved of
the death penalty, the battle over the issue seemed almost settled. But a
steady stream of convictions overturned by new DNA testing has been slowly
eroding public support over the past decade, and several new developments
are showcasing the growing complexities of the ultimate punishment.
Leonard Pitts writes on the occasion last Thursday of the 1,000th
execution since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, but his focus
is only on Texan Ruben Cantu, who was put to death in 1993. A recent
Houston Chronicle investigation strongly suggests Mr. Cantu was wrongly
executed, a prospect that sickens Mr. Pitts.
What's lacking in the country now, The Miami Herald columnist believes, is
the "moral courage [that] would require us ... to acknowledge how flawed
and capricious is this custom of killing people we judge guilty of crime.
Better to maintain the conscience-salving fiction that in this
undertaking, unlike every other field of human endeavor, we do not make
mistakes.
"Or when that fails, offer the twisted rationalization I hear sometimes
from readers and friends. Concede that we sometimes get it wrong but argue
that getting it wrong, while lamentable, somehow serves a greater good.
"Whenever someone says that, I am struck by how generous he or she is
willing to be with someone else's life."
Yet last week, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner was heeding his reservations
about the issue when he granted clemency to a death-row inmate whose DNA
evidence was mistakenly destroyed - a decree that Washington Post
columnist E.J. Dionne heartily endorses.
Mr. Warner, who has presided over 11 executions, "was responding not
simply to facts," Mr. Dionne writes.
"He was also operating in a changed political climate. Even supporters of
the death penalty now have doubts about how it is administered. Leading
conservative Christians are struggling with their consciences over how to
square their opposition to abortion with support for death sentences ...
"Virginia, Mr. Warner said in words that will always do him honor, 'must
ensure that every time this ultimate sanction is carried out, it is done
fairly.'"
Another aspect to the issue of fairness, Eugene Robinson notes, is being
put to the test in the very public campaign to stay the California
execution of Stanley (Tookie) Williams. Now contrite over the 1979 murder
of 4 people, the co-founder of the notorious Crips gang has gone on to
write children's books warning young people away from gangs.
Looking at the star-studded effort to keep Mr. Williams from his Dec. 13
date with the needle, Mr. Robinson objects to how the convict has been
singled out to be saved. "The state shouldn't execute Mr. Williams, but
only because the state shouldn't execute anybody," The Washington Post
columnist writes. "It can't be right to save Mr. Williams just because
he's a famous desperado (or former desperado) with famous friends, and
then blithely go back to snuffing out the lives of other criminals who
lack his talent for public relations.
"There are hundreds of other men on death row who repent of their crimes
and would appreciate a little executive clemency, but they don't have
movie stars pleading their cases ...
"For me, this case just reinforces my belief that there is no way the
death penalty can be fairly applied."
Kathleen Parker, a recent reluctant convert to opposing the death penalty,
now cringes at having to share the same side as "the celebrities,
political panderers and other hankie-twisters who materialize every time a
'Tookie' runs out of options and faces a far more humane death than that
which he delivered to others."
Ironically, the campaign itself "may be the best argument yet for
eliminating the death penalty," The Orlando Sentinel columnist writes.
"Dead, he's a martyr; alive and confined for life, he's just another
nobody."
(source: Balance of Opinion is a roundup of commentary published in
addition to the syndicated columns that regularly appear on Viewpoints.
Nancy Kruh is a freelance writer in Dallas; Dallas Morning News)
*****************
What Stanley Tookie Williams Will Do With the Rest of His Life
If granted clemency, Williams will work with the NAACP on programs to
reach at-risk youths
Stanley Tookie Williams said in a soon to be published essay titled What I
Will Do With the Rest of My Life that if he wins clemency he will partner
with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) on programs aimed at persuading at-risk youths to avoid gangs.
Williams said, "In the beginning, redemption was an alien concept to me.
However, while in solitary confinement, during 1988 to 1994, I embarked
upon a transitional path toward redemption. I underwent disciplined years
of education, soul searching, edification, spiritual cultivation and
battling my internal demons. Though I was loathed for being the co-founder
of the Crips, my redemption caused me to repudiate my gang leadership
role, to repudiate any affiliation with the Crips or other gangs."
NAACP President and CEO Bruce S. Gordon visited Williams at the San
Quentin Prison for more than 2 hours. Gordon said, "Stan gives us a unique
opportunity to help save lives by turning around some of these young
people who are inclined to join a street gang. He can speak with
credibility unmatched by most youth workers and counselors. He has agreed
to work with the NAACP to create and implement a violence prevention
curriculum for at-risk youths throughout America."
The NAACP is urging Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency for
Williams who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on December 13, 2005
.
Williams said, "Redemption has resurrected me from a mental and spiritual
death. It symbolizes the end of a bad beginning as well as a new start.
Being redeemed has enabled me to reunite with God, reclaim my humanity,
find inner peace and discover my raison detre - my reason to exist."
Recently when asked if he is prepared to die, Williams responded, "I'm
prepared to live. Though execution looms like poisonous toxins, Gods gift
of redemption revivifies my life. I inhale redemption and exhale joie de
vivre. Thats why I do not fear death. Socrates stated while defending his
life before court judges, A man who is good for anything should not
calculate the chance of living or dying. He should only consider whether
in doing anything, he is doing right, or wrong, and acting the part of a
good man, or of bad. I opted for good to assist the hopeless."
Williams has won international and national recognition for the 9 books he
wrote urging youths to stay away from gangs. He said in the editorial, -
Consequently, my spirit deeds are exhibited in my nine children's books;
my memoir, Blue Rage, Black Redemption; my educational website,
www.tookie.com; my Internet Project for Street Peace and my Peace
Protocol. All of my work is predicated on persuading youths and adults to
not follow in my footsteps. Still, my desire is to do more."
Williams said about his meeting with Gordon, "The partnership with this
nations oldest civil rights organization will provide me with the
structure and support to carry out my vision of a gang-free America."
In conclusion, Williams states, "I know that to whom much is given, much
is expected. If Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger grants me clemency, I will
accept it as an obligation to society to spend the rest of my life working
to reverse the cycle of youth violence. It is my desire to help save
society from producing more victims. Here and now, I bear witness that
Gods bequest of redemption has replenished me with a mission and revealed
that the impossible is possible."
The NAACP has called for a moratorium on executions until questions about
the reliability and fairness of capital punishment have been answered and
it is certain that the process does not discriminate. There are documented
cases that show the death penalty has been applied differently depending
on the race of the offender and the victim.
Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People is the nations oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its
half-million adult and youth members throughout the United States and the
world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities and
monitor equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
(source: NAACP)
***************
Spare Williams, redeemed or not
WE WHO OPPOSE capital punishment can take a simple position on Stanley
"Tookie" Williams: Don't execute him or anyone else.
A founder of the vicious Crips gang, Williams was convicted in California
of murdering four people. He has become a "cause" in Hollywood, which
infuriates many defenders of victims' rights. Williams is scheduled to die
by a lethal injection on Dec. 13.
Williams's supporters assert that the former thug has totally transformed
himself and now serves society by warning youth against gangs. A TV movie
made about Williams was called Redemption. Jamie Foxx starred as the
ex-gang leader. It should be noted that Williams maintains his innocence
in the murders. And his lawyers insist that their black client did not
receive a fair trial. Thousands are asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to
spare Williams's life.
Those pushing for his execution contend that Williams deserves to die for
the crimes he's convicted of. And besides, who knows whether his good
works, apologies and denials are just part of a con job?
Who knows, indeed? But we who think such state-sanctioned killing is
immoral don't have to arrive at any air-tight truths on the matter. As
long as Williams is incarcerated, he is unable to harm anyone outside
prison. Foes of capital punishment do have a special obligation to protect
the public. Many Americans would join their cause only with the assurance
that dangerous criminals serve life sentences, with no chance of parole.
If Governor Schwarzenegger grants clemency, Williams would still spend his
remaining days behind bars.
The swirl surrounding the Williams case has a hundred angles, the most
horrifying of which involves politics. A debate is on about whether
killing Williams would help or hurt Governor Schwarzenegger's political
prospects. Some think that granting Williams clemency would harm the
governor's standing with his conservative base. Others say that showing
mercy might shore up his appeal to the center.
That politics should play any part in the decision involving a person's
life is appalling, but it happens all the time. While public support for
capital punishment is declining, polls show most Americans still favor it
-- and politicians read polls. Raw political calculation is the only
plausible explanation for why Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas,
allowed the execution of a retarded man in 1992.
President Bush's approval of capital punishment seems to come from the
heart. How else to read his refusal, as Texas governor, to commute the
1998 death sentence of Karla Faye Tucker? Convicted of murder, Tucker had
apparently become a born-again Christian and married the prison chaplain.
Bush actually mocked her pleas and ignored appeals on her behalf from the
World Council of Churches, the pope, Newt Gingrich and Pat Robertson. I
thought of Tucker last month, while looking at a photo of the president
grinning in front of two turkeys he had just pardoned for Thanksgiving.
The celebrity crusade to save Williams somewhat muddies the issue. Yes,
Williams should not be executed, but neither should any of the less
attractive inmates on death row. That message is getting lost. The rapper
Snoop Dogg, Bianca Jagger, actor Mike Farrell and others note the
wonderful children's books that Williams helped write. They point to his
professions of remorse for his former gang activities. But groups against
the death penalty -- and Farrell and Jagger have been consistent members
-- confuse the public when they single out special cases.
Furthermore, people who oppose the death penalty must also treat the
victims' families and friends with utmost respect. Any of us would resent
having our voice trumped by the bullhorn of celebrity. The survivors of
horrendous crimes have suffered beyond measure, and we who oppose
executing their tormentors must acknowledge that fact.
All this attention is probably why Governor Schwarzenegger decided to hold
a private clemency hearing for Williams. He wouldn't do it for murderer
Donald Beardslee, who was executed last Jan. 19. The governor is now
hearing several arguments: Williams has "changed." He should continue his
educational work. And, the most potent of all, he may have been wrongly
convicted.
Foes of capital punishment need formulate only one opinion and put it
simply: The state should not be killing anyone who no longer threatens the
public.
(source: The Providence Journal -- Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial
writer and syndicated columnist; Rhode Island)
********************
Clemency bid to include claims of errors in trial
What the jury saw was a musclebound hulk in a 4X jacket. What they heard
about was barbaric: two cold-blooded robbery murders within 12 days, 4
dead and a suspect who was said to laugh hysterically as he mimicked the
gurgling last breaths of one victim.
Who they heard it from: an alleged accomplice granted immunity, a
jailhouse informant, an acquaintance with a checkered criminal past, a
friend who later claimed police beat him into testifying.
A police expert tied a shell casing from one crime scene to a slide-action
12-gauge shotgun owned by Stanley "Tookie" Williams, but there were no
fingerprints, no pictures, no bystanders to finger him. And no DNA that
could bolster or silence his claim of innocence.
A quarter-century later, the trial that landed the Crips gang co-founder
on death row draws renewed focus as his Dec. 13 execution date nears.
While his backers highlight his tale of atonement and anti-gang outreach
from prison, debate over his 1981 prosecution is bound to play out in the
Capitol on Thursday as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger entertains his case for
clemency.
The state's lawyers will underscore the savagery of the crimes, his
refusal to admit to them and the repeated rejections of his state and
federal appeals.
In response, lawyers for Williams likely will argue that the kind of
"snitch" testimony relied upon in his trial has led to numerous
exonerations, that the evidence was weak and appeals courts never really
considered his innocence claim.
"What the federal courts have done is looked at a host of legal questions,
such as whether Stanley Williams had inadequate representation, and
questions about the jury," said Jonathan Harris, one of the lawyers who
will speak for Williams.
"The question of Stanley Williams' guilt or innocence is not properly
before them."
The state Supreme Court last week rejected Williams' bid for new
ballistics tests and police records that they hoped would reignite his
legal case.
The decision, on a 4-2 vote, leaves Williams hanging his hopes on
clemency, which would commute his sentence to life without parole.
Unlike the clamor of celebrity and media attention over his plea for life,
there was scant public interest in Williams' criminal trial, which started
Jan. 21, 1981, and ended in a death sentence 2 months later.
At the time, a different Los Angeles capital case dominated the news: the
trial of Lawrence Bittaker, a machinist who would join Williams on death
row for kidnapping and slaying 5 teenage girls.
The Crips had yet to stamp their violent imprint on the national
consciousness. If jurors knew about the street gang, they were never told
Williams stood among its leaders. Nor did they hear from Williams, who
remained silent during the trial, occasionally jotting on a yellow
notepad.
The state's case went like this:
On Feb. 27, 1979, Williams smoked a cigarette laced with PCP and set out
with 3 others, in 2 cars, to rob. After failed attempts on a restaurant
and a liquor store, they drove to a Whittier 7-Eleven store, where Army
veteran Albert Owens, 26, was sweeping the parking lot about 4 a.m.
An alleged accomplice, Alfred Coward, testified that Williams ordered
Owens to walk to the back of the store, then lie down. He told the jury
that Williams shot out the store's security monitor, then killed Owens
with his shotgun, sawed off at the handle. The four men divided $120 among
them.
The jury also heard testimony that Williams bragged of the March 11 early
morning murders of 3 family members at the motel they ran on South Vermont
Avenue in Los Angeles. The state said Williams broke the locks and smashed
the molding on the door of the Brookhaven Motel, then shot Yen-I Yang, 76,
his wife, Tsai-Shai Yang, 63, and their daughter, Ye-Chen Lin, 43.
There were no witnesses to the motel murders. A 4th family member, Robert
Yang, awoke to gunshots but did not see Williams.
Coward was the state's lone eyewitness, testifying under immunity in the
7-Eleven murder. Another alleged accomplice, Tony Sims, never testified at
Williams' trial. He received a life prison term for his role in the
robbery-murder, in a separate trial during which he named Williams as the
shooter. The 3rd alleged accomplice, known only as "Darryl," also did not
testify.
Robert Martin, the prosecutor, said he granted immunity to Coward because
he was the least culpable and unarmed - a claim scoffed at by Williams'
lawyers, who cite a host of gun crimes on Coward's criminal record.
The jury knew of the immunity deal, but only portions of Coward's rap
sheet, which included armed robbery and carrying a loaded firearm.
Williams' lawyers argue that prosecutors also failed to reveal that Coward
was a Canadian citizen who may have given false testimony to avoid
deportation.
Coward is now serving time in a Canadian prison for robbery and
manslaughter.
Police recovered Williams' shotgun two days after the motel murders. They
said James Garrett, a con man, pulled it from under his bed. Williams
often stayed at Garrett's house, and Garrett named Williams for the
murders while police questioned Garrett about the killing of a crime
partner.
Garrett testified that Williams bragged about the motel murders and also
admitted to the 7-Eleven murder. Garrett's wife, Ester, also testified
that she heard Williams confess to the murders.
The jury knew some of Garrett's questionable past, but were not told of
any deals with him for leniency. Garrett, a career criminal credited with
masterminding several armed robberies, would later receive probation for a
variety of crimes, including extortion, over recommendations of jail time
by his probation officer. He is now dead.
Robert Martin, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted Williams,
insists he never struck a deal with Garrett.
"The only thing I told Garrett's attorney - this is quite usual - is that
if his judge called me and asked if he gave honest, truthful testimony,
I'd say yes," said Martin, now retired. "If ... the judge learns that he
testified truthfully in a murder case, he's probably going to get some
consideration."
Prosecutors are required to tell the defense about deals with witnesses.
This one was unspoken, said Williams' attorney, Verna Wefald.
"It's important to understand how this winking and nodding goes on with
informants and prosecutors," she said. "Nobody does this for nothing, and
everybody knows how the game is played except the jury."
Wefald said police never investigated Garrett for the murders, despite his
possession of the shotgun and his knowledge of what happened.
Samuel Colemen, a friend of Williams who was arrested with him, also
testified under immunity that Williams admitted the crimes to him. Later,
in 1994, Coleman signed a sworn affidavit saying police beat and
intimidated him into his testimony. His current whereabouts are unclear.
George Oglesby, a jailhouse informant with a grimy, violent criminal
record, told the jury that Williams bragged about the killings and plotted
an escape, planning to explode a jail bus with Coward aboard.
Jurors saw notes and a sketch that Williams purportedly wrote in jail,
plotting the escape. A handwriting expert testified that the writing
matched Williams' penmanship.
A police firearms expert also testified that he positively matched a shell
from the motel crime scene to Williams' shotgun - testing that his
attorneys call flimsy. 2 shells recovered from the 7-Eleven were
"consistent" with the shotgun, the expert said, but he could not make a
positive match.
The defense attorney never had the weapon tested.
"It's all informants, and that shotgun," said Wefald. "The shotgun clearly
looks like it was planted under Garrett's bed."
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected all of Williams' arguments about
the witnesses who testified.
It found that Williams' trial attorney "effectively called into question
the truthfulness of Oglesby's testimony through cross-examination." The
panel found that Williams could not prove that Garrett secured anything
more than a hope of leniency when he testified. And it held that, even if
Coleman was beaten and coerced, the time between the beating in 1979 and
the trial 2 years later was enough to make his testimony "sufficiently
voluntary."
After his conviction, Williams' attorney chose not to present mitigating
evidence, or any mental state defense, to avoid a death sentence. His
appeals lawyers claimed Williams received unconstitutionally weak defense.
The defense lawyer, Joe Ingber, says he made a calculated call.
"I had a dilemma. The prosecution chose not to include ... anything to do
with gangs," said Ingber. Any mitigating evidence "might open the door to
a lot of gang activity that hadn't been brought up in the guilt trial."
Asked what most swayed the jury, Ingber pointed to the figure he had
fitted in a 4X jacket to keep his muscles from stretching the seams.
"His physical presence would have been ominous enough for me. You're
sitting there, listening to four murders, a shotgun used to kill 3 people
in a family, and you're looking at a person who looks very ominous. It's
hard to be a little compassionate, except to the family."
Martin, the prosecutor, said the best evidence in the case "really came
from Tookie himself. The fact he told Sam Coleman, the fact he told the
Garretts and also his documents of the escape attempt."
The appeals court rejected Williams' claim that he was incompetent to
stand trial. Recently, he said he was involuntarily drugged in jail while
awaiting trial - a claim that the state Supreme Court declined to
entertain.
The trial record shows that Williams was barely responsive to questions
from the judge.
In his memoir, "Blue Rage, Black Redemption," Williams devotes only a few
sentences to his trial, writing that he "sleepwalked numbly through the
majority of the ordeal." He describes that period as "an amnesiac episode
that flew by with the speed of light."
Now, 24 years later, Williams can only hope that Schwarzenegger rewrites
the ending.
(source: Contra Costa Times)
*************************
If The State Kills Tookie
The dangling question in the raging debate over the fate of Stanley
"Tookie" Williams is what if the state kills him? Though President Bush
didn't specifically mention Williams's pending execution, he recently took
the occasion of the execution of a North Carolina inmate, to publicly
declare that the death penalty saves lives.
Death penalty opponents vehemently dispute that. They say that it's
inhumane, and ineffectual. Victims rights groups say that killing Williams
and other killers bring closure to the family members of the killer's
victims. Many in the media worry that with passions running white hot over
the case, Williams' execution could spark violence, and turn him into a
martyr. These are hotly debated and disputed points.
There is no evidence that killing Williams or any of the other 1,000 men
and women that states have executed since the death penalty was reinstated
in 1976 has deterred killers from killing. 18 of the 20 states with the
highest murder rates impose the death penalty. 17 of 20 big cities with
the highest murder rates are in death penalty states. Michigan and Indiana
are next door to each other. One has the death penalty (Indiana), the
other doesn't (Michigan), and 2 decades later their murder rates have
remained fairly constant.
The murder rate in America did drop to a forty year low this year and that
made headline news. But it made news only because the murder rate in
America has been so stunningly high to begin with. Even with the drop, the
15,000 to 20,000 murders in America yearly, has remained fairly steady.
The U.S. has the highest murder rate of any nation on the planet.
Despite the nation's stratospheric murder rates, the death penalty affects
relatively few Americans other than the condemned killers, their families,
and their victim's families. That's because most killers, including some
of the worst, don't get the death penalty. Only one of several hundred
murderers among the thousands of murders committed yearly get the death
penalty.
Even tossing Texas into the execution total, who gets the death penalty
depends on the victim, race, money, the location where the murder was
committed, the quality of legal representation, and luck. Williams was one
of the very few unlucky ones. Even then it takes decades for the condemned
to exhaust their layers of legal appeals, and face execution. Williams has
languished on death row for nearly a quarter century. When executions take
place, they are done out of public view, and barely stir a ripple in the
press or among the public.
The talk of violence, if Williams is killed, is mostly media talk, and
that's only because Williams is black, many of his most impassioned and
visible supporters are black, and the death penalty is wrongly seen as a
black and white issue. But death penalty opponents come in all shapes and
colors, and the most vigorous of them are white and middle class with a
sprinkle of high profile celebrities among them.
There is also too much doubt, disinterest, and even support for the death
penalty among many blacks for it solely to be a black-white issue.
Pro-death penalty blacks are furious at him and other blacks that prey on
poor, black communities. Williams's death in the words of Emerson about
the execution of John Brown in 1859 will not "make the gallows as glorious
as the cross." His death will be a great tragedy, a monumental waste of
human potential, but it won't canonize him, let alone spark violence.
Then there's the wide belief that death penalty provides closure for
victim's families. That's even more questionable. The state killing of
Williams will erase his life, but it can't totally erase the pain, rage,
and grief that victim's survivors experience. That's simply too intense,
and personal. The debate over Williams's fate is a textbook example of
that.
The stepmother of Albert Owens, the 7-Eleven store clerk, and one of the
four victims that Williams was convicted of gunning down, has publicly
said that Williams must die, and that his death will bring relief for
Owens's family. Though Owens's brother, Wayne, does not support clemency,
he's just as vocal that his execution is "a no-win" situation for
everyone. He has no plans to attend the execution.
Owens is no exception to the rule that murder victim's families routinely
cork champagne at a killer's death. In 1995, reporters were stunned at the
sight of a spirited demonstration by a contingent of family members and
relatives of the murdered victims of at the federal prison Timothy
McVeigh, the convicted Oklahoma City terror bomber, was scheduled for
execution. They weren't there to revel in McVeigh's execution. They were
there to condemn it. They bombarded President Clinton with letters and
petitions demanding that he be spared.
They, and a spate of groups, such as Murder Victims' Families for
Reconciliation actively crusade to scrap the death for any and all
killers, and that includes those facing death for murdering their loved
ones.
Williams's execution will not resolve these muddled and contentious
issues. They will continue to tear states and the public for years to
come. In other words, no one wins.
(source: AlterNet--Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political
analyst. He is the author of 'The Crisis in Black and Black' (Middle
Passage Press--)
****************
Stanley Tookie Williams' best hope for clemency may depend more on raising
doubt about his guilt than on his redemption
If Stanley Tookie Williams is executed on Tuesday shortly after midnight
for 4 1979 murders, his legions of supporters will say the state has
killed an innocent man.
If Williams is spared, Los Angeles County prosecutors and the relatives of
the dead will say a cold-blooded killer was granted the mercy that he
never gave the victims.
The record of Williams' case leaves enough room for each side to argue its
position of guilt or innocence with little chance of satisfying the other
side's objections.
Williams has maintained his innocence since the 1981 trial that sent him
to death row, but he has been unable to produce the type of evidence that
has led to exonerations in other cases -- DNA, a rock-solid alibi,
recanting witnesses or a 3rd-party confession.
Prosecutors maintain that the evidence against him was overwhelming. But
the 2 federal courts that reviewed Williams' case did not appear to be
overwhelmed, even though they upheld his convictions and death sentence.
The prosecution's case was based on circumstantial evidence and the
testimony of witnesses "whose credibility was highly suspect," U.S.
District Judge Stephen Wilson wrote in 1998. He noted that there were no
eyewitnesses to the shotgun murders of three people at a Los Angeles motel
and that the only testifying eyewitness to the killing of a convenience
store clerk was "an accomplice who had a strong motive to lie."
4 years later, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voiced similar
qualms, saying the prosecution had relied on witnesses with
"less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie" to win lenient
treatment for their own crimes.
Despite their reservations, neither Wilson nor the appeals court found any
reason to set aside the jury verdict in Williams' trial. Their rulings,
and the verdict they reaffirmed, pose a formidable barrier to Williams'
effort to convince the public in general, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
in particular, that he is innocent.
Williams' hopes of winning clemency from Schwarzenegger, who will hold a
private hearing on the matter Thursday, could depend on his lawyers'
ability to raise at least lingering doubts about his guilt. The worldwide
campaign to save Williams' life has stressed his redemption as the Crips
gang founder who became an anti-gang crusader, author of anti-violence
books for youths and broker of gangland truces.
But clemency cases in other states suggest that only a credible claim of
innocence has a chance of swaying a governor.
"It's about the only ground in which governors grant clemency in the
modern period," said Austin Sarat, professor of law and politics at
Amherst College in Massachusetts and author of "Mercy on Trial," a book
about clemency.
In recent decades, he said, "I know of no case in which a death row inmate
has been spared (solely) on the basis of post-conviction rehabilitation."
The witnesses
The case against Williams depends, ultimately, on the credibility of
prosecution witnesses whom the jury found believable in spite of their
unsavory backgrounds.
With no evidence that demonstrates his innocence, Williams and his
supporters are left to argue that he was framed by witnesses who lied in
exchange for leniency and railroaded by a prosecutor who engaged in racist
tactics.
Williams was convicted of murdering Albert Lee Owens, 26, a clerk at a
7-Eleven in Whittier (Los Angeles County), who was ordered to lie on the
floor and then shot in the back during a $120 robbery on Feb. 27, 1979. He
was also convicted of murdering Yen-I Yang, 76, and Tsai-Shai Yang, 63,
owners of the Brookhaven Motel in Los Angeles, and their daughter,
Yee-Chen Lin, 43, all shot to death during a $100 robbery on March 11,
1979.
No fingerprints, blood or clothing at either crime scene connected
Williams to the shootings. The main physical evidence against him was a
shell casing at the motel, matched to Williams' shotgun by a sheriff's
expert whose testing methods have been derided as "junk science" by an
expert hired by Williams' current lawyers. Last week, the state Supreme
Court rejected a defense request for new tests of the gun.
The chief eyewitness was Alfred Coward, who took part in the 7-Eleven
robbery and was given immunity from prosecution. He testified that
Williams had led a group of four men into the store, forced Owens into a
storage room at gunpoint, shot the clerk and later laughed about it,
imitating the sounds Owens made as he died.
Another of the robbers, Tony Sims, did not testify at Williams' trial but
implicated him at Sims' own murder trial, which resulted in a life
sentence.
Other prosecution witnesses said Williams had confessed to one or both
sets of murders. Samuel Coleman, who was arrested along with Williams and
was given immunity from prosecution, testified that Williams had admitted
to the motel killings. Williams' lawyers said that Coleman was not alleged
to have had any connection with the killings and that it was never clear
why he needed immunity.
At a 1994 hearing, Coleman said police had beaten him and threatened to
charge him with murder unless he testified against Williams. However,
federal courts found that his testimony had been voluntary and noted that
he had a lawyer at the time of the trial.
James and Ester Garrett, in whose home Williams regularly stayed, both
quoted Williams as telling them, separately, that he had committed both
sets of murders and had referred to the motel victims as "Buddhaheads."
Another witness, jailhouse informant George Oglesby, also testified that
Williams had admitted to the killings and said Williams had plotted a
pretrial jailbreak in which Coward, the prospective prosecution witness,
would be killed.
Williams, who had no serious criminal record despite eight years as a
leader of the Crips, did not testify and told his lawyer not to present
any witnesses at the penalty phase. At one point, the jury foreman told
the judge that Williams was seen mouthing a threat to "get each and every
one'' of the jurors who had convicted him.
The defense
Defense witnesses included three who said Williams was elsewhere at the
time of the murders and one who said Oglesby was known for spreading false
information in jail. Williams' claim of innocence, during and since the
trial, has focused on discrediting the prosecution witnesses.
In a recent filing with the state Supreme Court that sought unsuccessfully
to reopen the case, Williams' lawyers said the Garretts both had criminal
records, faced felony charges at the time of the trial and had been given
money and leniency by prosecutors for their testimony.
The lawyers described James Garrett as a "career criminal and police
informant'' and accused prosecutors of concealing evidence that might have
implicated him in the killing of a former crime partner and might have
made him a logical suspect in the motel murders. Garrett, who died in
1996, was given probation or light sentences for a series of post-1981
crimes, including two shootings, and "knew that he could continue to call
in favors for the rest of his criminal career," Williams' lawyers said.
Coward, who was not prosecuted for his role in the 7-Eleven murder,
continued his life of crime and is now in a Canadian prison on a
manslaughter conviction for beating a man to death during a 1999 robbery,
Williams' lawyers said.
They also said Los Angeles prosecutors had arranged for the appointment of
a lawyer for Coleman who would assure his testimony against Williams -- a
claim disputed by prosecutors, who said the lawyer was independent and
well respected.
Williams and his backers also say the trial was infused with racism.
Deputy District Attorney Robert Martin removed three African Americans
from the jury, but the racial composition of the jury remains in dispute
-- in particular, the race of an apparently dark-skinned juror of Filipino
descent who also might have been black.
Nine judges on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- 4 short of the
necessary majority -- said in February that Williams should get a new
hearing on the juror removals.
Williams' lawyers also accused Martin of racism for telling jurors, in his
closing argument, that seeing Williams in the courtroom was like seeing a
"Bengal tiger in captivity in the zoo." Defense lawyers noted that the
state Supreme Court had overturned 2 later death sentences in cases
prosecuted by Martin because of questions about whether race had motivated
his juror selections.
The federal appeals court said both points were legally irrelevant to the
fairness of Williams' trial.
In the end, Williams and his lawyers were unable to find a way to raise
doubts about his guilt before the courts, which instead focused on such
legal issues as jury selection, suppression of evidence and the competence
of the defense lawyer.
Now that clemency is his last hope, Williams' "claim of innocence may be
hurting him" by making it impossible for him to express remorse for the
four murders, said UC Berkeley Law Professor Franklin Zimring, an expert
on clemency.
If that costs him his life, so be it, Williams says. He told The Chronicle
in an interview Thursday, "It is absurd for a person to apologize for
something he didn't do. I will not lower my integrity. It would be wrong."
(source: San Francisco Chronicle)
******************
Clemency is rarely dispensed to death row inmates these days
Politics and history will not be on Stanley Tookie Williams' side Thursday
when the founder of the murderous Crips gang asks Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger to spare his life for killing 4 people during 2 robberies
26 years ago.
Except for Illinois Gov. George Ryan's 2003 decision to clear out death
row in his final hours in office, clemency is a gubernatorial option
rarely exercised in today's tough-on-crime climate.
"There are 3 reasons why clemency is hardly given now," said Michael
Radelet, a University of Colorado sociology professor. "1 is politics. 2
is politics and three is politics."
The last California governor to grant clemency was Ronald Reagan in 1967,
but the case was far different from Williams' situation and times have
changed dramatically since then.
The life-and-death power bestowed on the kings of England and transferred
to governors and presidents of the United States has become a little-used
option in the three decades since states resumed executions.
Before 1976, the year the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to
resume after a brief hiatus, clemency was routinely granted. According to
the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 204 inmates nationwide were spared
between 1960 and 1970.
Excluding the 167 Illinois inmates whose death sentences were commuted in
2003, only 63 lives have been spared since 1976, according to the Death
Penalty Information Center.
Most of those acts of mercy were the result of defendants' mental
infirmities, doubts about their guilt, or efforts to build confidence in
the death penalty system. Last week Virginia's governor commuted a death
sentence because a pair of bloody scissors was improperly destroyed after
the trial, depriving the defense of the opportunity to conduct new DNA
tests.
Williams, 51, is scheduled to die by injection just after midnight Monday
for gunning down 4 people at a convenience store and a motel in 1979. He
claims he is innocent, but all the courts that reviewed his case have
refused to reopen it.
Hollywood celebrities, capital punishment foes and others contend he has
redeemed himself at San Quentin Prison and undergone a death row
conversion from gang leader to a man of peace. He has written anti-gang
books for children, and many gang members have said his teachings helped
them change their ways.
"If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter
Fleming Jr. asked in Williams' petition, "what meaning does clemency
retain in this state?"
Prosecutors and victims' relatives say he does not deserve mercy because
he has not acknowledged guilt and has refused to inform on his gang
cohorts.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers will have an hour in private with
Schwarzenegger on Thursday to argue their cases. Schwarzenegger has said
only that it is a weighty decision and he will give it serious thought.
The odds of getting a reprieve were better in the days before the
California Supreme Court twice overturned the death penalty in 1972 and
1976. Following that, the public and lawmakers began cracking down on
crime.
The Legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1977. A year later, 72
percent of California voters adopted an even stiffer capital punishment
law. In 1986, the voters removed three state Supreme Court justices for
reversing too many death sentences. In 1994, voters adopted the nation's
toughest repeat-offender law, the three-strikes-you're out measure that
allows life sentences for third offenses as petty as shoplifting.
California's death row is the biggest in the nation, with nearly 650
condemned inmates. 11 inmates have been executed since 1977.
"Clemency has become part of the politics of criminal punishment and has
been slowly evaporating," said Frank Zimring, a clemency expert at the
University of California at Berkeley. "When it comes to crime and
punishment, there's been a conspicuous toughening of the governor and the
public."
During his 2 years in office, Schwarzenegger has denied clemency to two
condemned men despite their claims of mental infirmities, innocence and
good behavior behind bars.
Schwarzenegger is still smarting from the defeat of four ballot measures
he backed during a November special election, and political analysts have
said that granting clemency would not sit well with the conservative base
the Republican needs if he hopes to win re-election next year.
An independent poll last year found that 68 % of Californians support the
death penalty - 54 % of Democrats and 87 % of Republicans.
"If he granted clemency, I would say, it would be a very divisive
opinion," pollster Mark DiCamillo said. "Large segments of the public
would take him to task."
Clemency has long been intertwined with politics.
Gov. Pat Brown, who in the 1950s and '60s commuted 23 death sentences,
more than any California governor, acknowledged that he once let an inmate
die in the gas chamber to get a minimum-wage bill through the Legislature.
(source: Associated Press -- David Kravets has been covering state and
federal courts for more than a decade)
******************
Who let this Dogg out?----Of all the celebrity wattage that has lately
illuminated the cause of saving Crips founder and convicted murderer
Stanley Tookie Williams from execution - a cause that will prevail or not
within the week - no light has shone more unexpectedly than that of rapper
Snoop Dogg.
The media has largely missed that point, viewing his presence as par for
the course.
Snoop (nee Calvin Broadus) is a north Long Beach native and the
self-proclaimed "doggfather" of West Coast gangsta rap who is intimately
familiar with Crip life and who helped build a whole musical and cultural
paradigm on black gang culture. He's recorded on the genre's definitive
(and crime-plagued) label, Death Row. For Snoop to show up at Save Tookie
rallies and to speak at the mike, his favorite tool of expression,
therefore appears, on the surface, unsurprising - one street-bred brother
supporting another.
But it's a lot more complicated than that.
Though they come from the same place in many more ways than one, Snoop and
rappers of his ilk have actually worked at cross purposes with Williams
for years. While Williams has been busy in prison denouncing the gang life
and violence in the 'hood, Snoop's music has accepted it, at least, and
glorified it at most.
Certainly this made business sense, if nothing else: Gangsta rap's
popularity, which quickly spread far beyond black circles, was fueled much
less by overt social commentary or activism than by inherent elements of
pulp fiction and a certain moral detachment from the harrowing events it
described. It made young black men iconic instead of socially irrelevant.
And with his laconic air and laissez-faire attitude toward "niggas" and
street life, coupled with his seductive hooks, Snoop epitomized the L.A
gangsta doyen, and the city's regard of its own black ghettoes don't
care, don't fix, but be sure to mine for whatever shock and entertainment
value is there.
Snoop learned the lessons of Hollywood well, branding himself as "major
playa" through his music and through ventures like a line of porn videos
that solidified his quasi-benevolent thug/pimp image. The unwaveringly
earnest, unsexy works of people like Williams seemed the furthest thing
from his mind, to say nothing of his business plan.
But then, Williams' 25-year-long stay of execution ran out, and Snoop
found himself at an unexpected critical moment. It was coming; the aging
star (he's 33) has been coaching Pop Warner football for the last several
years and started a youth foundation. Hard-core gangsta rap's popularity
has been steadily downshifting and, in the racially oppressive age of
George W. Bush, hip-hop figures such as Russell Simmons and P. Diddy are
finding their political voices either by design (the "Vote or Die"
campaign) or default (like rapper Kanye West's tortured conclusion, after
Hurricane Katrina, that Bush "doesn't like black people").
But although I always thought that those guys, rooted in the East Coast,
had serious things to say that were waiting for an outlet, I never felt
that way about Snoop. So when he began appearing among crowds gathering
around the state to call for clemency for Williams, I was genuinely
shocked.
His eyes, usually at a drugged half-mast, were wide open. His voice was
urgent and clear, in contrast to the emotionally vapid purr, punctuated by
insider wordplay like "telefizzle," that is his trademark. Most
remarkably, he described himself as a role model who felt a responsibility
to carry on Williams' message about the destructiveness of gang life.
"Tookie transformed a little bit of me," Snoop told an audience of young
people recently at the Central Library, where he took part in a
celebrity-studded reading of Williams' works. "So many people on the
streets don't write books and don't care about y'all."
It's official: Snoop Dogg cares. I'm not so naive to think that he'll
change his tune wholesale and start preaching peace and cooperation in the
'hood from the pulpit of his CDs; that's simply not what's made him rich
and famous. And in the bigger picture, although black popular music has
always coded and reflected social problems, it has never itself been an
engine of social change - that's been the job of politicians, community
leaders and others, too many of whom are spending too much time fretting
about hip-hop's failure to lead black people out of their current troubled
state (talk about projection).
It seems particularly deluded to expect gangsta rap to do the leading.
Which is why I take such heart from Snoop's unequivocal stance on the
significance of Tookie Williams, not just to him but to young folks a
couple of generations removed from the grim, entirely unglamorous
beginnings of the Crips.
Snoop Dogg as a missing link of black leadership? It's a stretch. But so
far it's holding.
(source: opinion, Erin Kaplan, Los Angeles Times)
*******************
California should speed execution process
California should execute or reprieve death row prisoners within about
five years instead of the present 20 and do more to speed up the process,
the chief justice of the state's Supreme Court said on Tuesday.
"If people want to have the death penalty, then I think sufficient
resources should be provided to carry out the process in a timely way,"
Chief Justice Ronald George told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
"I don't mean an overly rushed way, but I think it's a poor reflection on
the administration of justice if it gets to be something like out of
Charles Dickens 'Bleak House' when these cases go on for decade after
decade."
George, whose court reviews all death penalty cases in California, spoke
ahead of the scheduled execution by lethal injection next week of Stanley
Tookie Williams, the co-founder of the Crips gang who killed 4 in petty
robberies in 1979.
Williams has literally gone gray in the 24 years since he sentenced to
death in 1981 and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is due to decide
whether to grant him clemency in the coming days. The Williams case has
drawn wide publicity amid a well-organized campaign saying he has earned
redemption by writing a series of anti-gang books in prison.
"The leading cause of death on death row in California is old age --
that's literally true," said George, who was appointed by a Republican
governor to the court in 1991.
"If you have a death penalty, I don't think it is appropriate to have
these proceedings go on so long," George said. "I would think in most
instances this should be finalized with either an affirmance or a reversal
within perhaps 5 years, let's say, but not 20."
"FLAT LINE"
During an interview with Williams at San Quentin prison last month, a
visitor saw half a dozen other death row inmates, all of whom appeared to
be in their 50s, 60s or older.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation lists 648
condemned inmates, the longest serving of whom arrived on death row in
1978. Since then, California has executed 11 men, while 48 have died from
natural causes, suicide or other reasons.
"We don't want to turn them out the way they do in the southern states,
you know, lickety-split, but on the other hand, because of the lack of
resources to do things right, it takes much longer in California," Chief
Justice George said.
"We even have sometimes a delay of 3 or 4 years before we can even find an
attorney who we think is competent to represent these people on appeal
after they have received their judgment of death."
Even after years of legal review of a murder case, the state's top judges
gather 15 minutes before midnight on the night of the execution, and plan
to so again next Monday.
"The warden inquires a couple minutes before midnight is there any cause
pending before the California Supreme Court why they should not go forward
with the execution." George said.
"Then we end up hearing a blow by blow of what's happening and then we
wait there until we hear the words 'flat line' and then go home -- that
means there is no pulse on the monitors."
(source: Reuters)
