Hospitals & Asylums
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Clemency Petition of a Member of the US Prison Population
SAN FRANCISCO (Dec. 11) -
Supporters of former gang leader and convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams
made a last-minute pitch to save his life Sunday, saying they had a new
witness, while prosecutors asked the California Supreme Court to allow his execution
to go forward as scheduled early Tuesday.
Williams, 51, was convicted of killing a man during a robbery in
February 1979 and of murdering a couple and their daughter at a
Deputy Attorney General Lisa
Brault wrote to the court that Williams' request for a stay of execution
"is without merit and is manifestly designed for delay." Her brief
came hours after a lawyer for Williams urged the court to stop the execution on
the grounds that Williams should have been allowed to argue at his 1981 trial
that someone else killed one of his four alleged victims. She also noted state
lawmakers are expected to consider a moratorium on the death penalty next
month. The justices didn't immediately
rule on either request. They earlier denied a defense request to reopen the
case over allegations that shoddy forensics linked a weapon used in three of
the 1979 murders to a shotgun registered to Williams. The California Supreme Court, a federal
district court judge in
Williams has one other avenue
for a reprieve besides the courts - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said last
week that he was agonizing over Williams' request for clemency. On Sunday, Williams' supporters made a last-minute
pitch to the governor, saying that a man who could help prove Williams'
innocence had come forward. The man's statements were sent to Schwarzenegger's
office, where the staff said he wouldn't announce his decision on the clemency
request before Monday. "All we need
now is time to investigate to make sure this story is real," said NAACP
California President Alice Huffman. "We're hoping and praying for
clemency, but we're not going to leave any stone unturned." Clemency for convicted killers hasn't been
common in
This brief attempts to reestablish rapport between HA and
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, after his slump in the opinion polls after not
having a soul in regards to Scott Peterson v. Red.
Desirous to undertake hereby an
international commitment to abolish the death penalty,
Have agreed as follows:
1. No one within the jurisdiction of a State Party to the present Protocol shall be executed.
2. Each State Party
shall take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty within its
jurisdiction.
Article 2
1. In States where executions have not been abolished punishment shall be meted out to public officials who abuse the death penalty
2. The official sentence is one day per execution committed.
3. Officials who do not stop killing may be sentenced for longer periods of time.
Article 3
1. The public must be fully and truthfully informed regarding pending executions with enough time to respond
2. The State shall grant clemency in all of these death penalty cases
Article 4
1. The legislature shall swiftly replace those executives who breech this peace
Cautious of the homicidal conspiracy between the State of
The killer of four and Crips
co-founder is given a lethal injection after Schwarzenegger denies clemency. He
never admitted his guilt.
By Jenifer Warren and Maura Dolan, Times Staff Writers
Stanley Tookie Williams, whose
self-described evolution from gang thug to antiviolence crusader won him an
international following and nominations for a Nobel Peace Prize, was executed
by lethal injection early today, hours after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused
to spare his life.
His death was announced at
During the execution, the inmate’s friend Barbara Becnel and
other supporters mouthed "God bless you" and "We love you"
and blew kisses to Williams. Williams also seemed to mouth statements to
Becnel.
The entire procedure took longer than usual. The execution team took about 12
minutes to find a vein in Williams’ muscular left arm. While the personnel were
probing, Williams repeatedly lifted his head off the gurney, winced visibly,
and at one point appeared to say: "Still can’t find it?"
After Williams was pronounced dead, Becnel and two other supporters of Williams
turned toward the media in the witness room and yelled in unison, "The
state of
Lora Owens, murder victim Albert Owens’ stepmother, appeared shaken, and was
embraced by another woman.
Outside the gates of San Quentin as
Angry shouts broke out. A woman sobbed on someone’s shoulder, and a man burned
an American flag. As
Speaking outside the gates of San Quentin after the execution, Becnel, who is
taking possession of Williams’ body, called Schwarzenegger a "cold-blooded
murderer" and vowed to work for his defeat in the next election.
Despite persistent pleas for mercy from around the globe, the governor earlier
in the day had said Williams was unworthy of clemency because he had not
admitted his brutal shotgun murders of four people during two robberies 26
years ago.
After the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request for a last-minute stay Monday
evening, the co-founder of the infamous Crips street gang — who insisted he was
innocent of the murders — became the 12th man executed by the state of
California since voters reinstated capital punishment in 1978.
With its racial overtones and compelling theme — society’s dueling goals of
redemption and retribution — the case provoked more controversy than any
A long list of prominent supporters — as disparate as South African Bishop
Desmond Tutu and rapper Snoop Dogg — rallied to Williams’ cause.
But in a strongly worded rejection of Williams’ request for clemency,
Schwarzenegger said he saw no need to rehash or second-guess the many court
decisions already rendered in the case, and he questioned the death row
inmate’s claims of atonement.
Williams, the governor said in a statement, never admitted guilt, plotted to
kill law enforcement officers after his capture, and made little mention in his
writings of the scourge of gang killings, which the statement called "a
tragedy of our modern culture."
As night descended Monday, about 1,000 demonstrators who gathered on a
tree-lined street leading to the gates of San Quentin State Prison endured
frosty temperatures to protest the execution.
Joan Baez sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" as speakers urged participants
to keep fighting. Small clumps of people in scarves and gloves held candles and
sang hymns, while others wandered off alone, gazing into the bay.
There were small, scattered protests around the state, including a candlelight
vigil Monday night in Leimert Park.
A few death penalty supporters also turned out at San Quentin. Scuffles and
shoving matches broke out on occasion, but no serious incidents were reported.
Behind the prison’s thick walls, Williams passed his dwindling hours quietly,
visiting with friends and talking on the telephone while under constant watch
by guards.
An acquaintance described him sitting at a table,
handcuffed, next to untouched turkey sandwiches, bidding goodbye to friends in
an ordinary, everyday manner.
A prison spokesman said Williams was calm and upbeat, though he ate nothing but
oatmeal and milk all day, refusing the privilege of a special last meal.
Williams also declined a spiritual advisor.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he met twice with Williams, and
together with Becnel delivered the news that the governor had denied clemency.
Williams smiled "as if he expected it," Jackson said. He said
Williams again denied his guilt, and said that he thought "his baggage as
a Crip was on trial more than for the four murders."
In recent statements, Williams had expressed a philosophical attitude about his
own death. Fred Jackson, 67, who works with Internet Project for Street Peace,
Williams’ gang intervention project, said the inmate struck that tone in a phone
conference with an Oakland support group Sunday. "He said he doesn’t fear
death — he doesn’t fear what he does not know," Jackson said.
At 6 p.m., Williams was strip-searched, given a set of clean clothes and placed
in a holding cell steps from the death chamber under nonstop observation by a
sergeant and two officers.
Officials said he spent the evening watching TV and reading some of the roughly
50 letters that arrived Monday from as far as Italy and Israel — including some
from schoolchildren. Many of them said they were praying for him.
Nearby, the injection team began its final preparations in the prison’s
converted gas chamber, ensuring that the required needles, tubes and chemicals
were in place.
Williams’ son, Stanley Williams Jr., who is in High Desert State Prison serving
a 16-year sentence for second-degree murder, will be notified in person of his
father’s death by a chaplain and mental health specialist, prison officials
said.
The younger Williams is in isolation for disciplinary problems, and would not
normally have access to any news source.
Five members of the murder victims’ families were at the prison, although it
was not clear how many witnessed the execution. Williams, who earlier said he
didn’t want to invite anyone to observe "the sick and perverted
spectacle," had five witnesses, including Becnel and members of his legal
team.
Officials designated a total of 39 witnesses, including 17 media
representatives.
Lora Owens said she did not expect the execution to end the ache over losing
her red-haired stepson, Albert, who was killed with a shotgun at the age of 26
while working at a Pico Rivera 7-Eleven late one February night in 1979. But
watching the killer take his last breath, she said, might help her "let it
go" just a bit.
Advocates for clemency had argued that Williams had unmatched credibility as a
messenger urging youths to say no to gangs.
But law enforcement officials and victims’ rights leaders portrayed Williams as
a fraud whose influence on would-be gangsters was overblown.
Prosecutors said the absence of a confession, and Williams’ refusal to formally
cut ties with the Crips by sharing his knowledge of gang tactics with police,
disproved his claim of rehabilitation.
"What kind of message does that send to young children, when somebody like
Mr. Williams, who supposedly has their attention, tells them, ‘Don’t snitch,
don’t talk to police, don’t tell people who was involved in a crime?’."
said John Monaghan, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney.
As Schwarzenegger weighed his decision, attorneys for Williams spent the
weekend hunting for a court that might issue a stay.
On Sunday, the state Supreme Court turned back arguments that his trial was
"fundamentally unfair" in part because prosecutors had failed to
disclose that a key witness, Alfred Coward, was a violent ex-felon. The U.S.
9th Circuit Court of Appeals and finally the U.S. Supreme Court followed suit
Monday.
After the governor rejected clemency, lawyers asked Schwarzenegger for a stay
on the basis of three witnesses who they said had come forward just this week
with exculpatory information. But Schwarzenegger again delivered a rebuff.
Just before 9:30 p.m., Williams lawyers filed another
petition, citing a fourth purported witness who claimed other inmates tried to
recruit him into a scheme to frame Williams. The governor denied that, too.
Born in New Orleans, Stanley Tookie Williams III was named for his father but
raised by his mother. Hoping to escape poverty and crime in Louisiana, the
family moved to South Los Angeles in 1959.
He spent his youth as a delinquent, rebounding in and out of
Central Juvenile Hall. In his writings, he admitted that he was a megalomaniac
who beat, robbed and shot at the innocent.
By the 1970s, Williams was viewed as one of the more menacing toughs in South
Los Angeles, weighing 300 pounds with biceps measuring 22 inches.
In a move he said he regretted more than any other, he helped launch the Crips
— originally called the Cribs — and began terrorizing the streets.
On Feb. 27, 1979, he and three cohorts smoked cigarettes laced with PCP and,
armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a .22-caliber handgun, set out on a
late-night search for a place to rob, according to court documents.
They wound up at the 7-Eleven where Owens, a father of two and Army veteran,
was working the overnight shift. Owens was shot twice in the back.
Less than two weeks later, Williams broke down the door at the Brookhaven Motel
and killed the motel’s owners, Taiwanese immigrants Yen-I Yang, his wife,
Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, and their daughter, Yu Chin Yang Lin, who was visiting.
The two robberies netted $220.
In 1981, a jury in Torrance convicted Williams, landing him on death row.
Initially his conduct was disruptive: "I gave this place hell," he
acknowledged in an interview.
While in solitary confinement, however, he began a transformation, Williams
said. At first he read voraciously — the Bible, the dictionary, philosophy,
black history — and struggled to understand his past.
By 1992, Williams was a changed man, he said, deeply remorseful for the bloody
rampage the Crips had perpetrated across America — and for the gang life that
lured in one of his two sons.
In 1994, Williams left solitary confinement and declared himself a champion of
peace.
With the help of Becnel, he wrote a series of books warning youths away from
violence and brokered gang truces in Los Angeles and New Jersey. Last year, his
life became the subject of a TV movie, "Redemption," starring Jamie
Foxx, and his imposing appearance gradually gave way to a graying beard and
spectacles.
Reached by phone at her Los Angeles home as the execution was underway,
Williams’ ex-wife, Bonnie Williams Taylor, said, "This is an awful time. I
want to be with my family."
Earlier in the evening, dozens of people had gathered in Leimert Park in Los
Angeles to oppose the execution. But the speakers who addressed them focused
more on healing crime in black communities than on Williams’ plight.
"We have to understand," said African American activist Eric Wattree,
53, speaking to a mostly black crowd early in the evening, "this is our
failure taking place here."
Times staff writers Dan Morain and Steve Chawkins in San Quentin and Jill
Leovy, Lisa Richardson, Greg Krikorian, Louis Sahagun and Carla Hall in Los
Angeles contributed to this report.