Tookie Williams executed in California

**joeSoap** · 13/12/2005, 11:55 AM

Schwarzenegger refuses to spare life of gang founder
13/12/2005 - 07:59:24

Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to block the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, rejecting the notion that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had atoned for his crimes and found redemption on death row.

With the US Supreme Court rejecting his final appeal, Williams, 51, is set to die by injection at San Quentin Prison at 8:01 Irish time for murdering four people during two 1979 hold-ups.

Williams’ case became one of the nation’s biggest death-row cause celebres in decades. It set off a nationwide debate over the possibility of redemption on death row with Hollywood stars and capital punishment foes arguing that Williams had made amends by writing children’s books about the dangers of gangs.

But Schwarzenegger suggested yesterday that Williams’ supposed change of heart was not genuine, noting that the inmate had not owned up to his crimes or shown any real remorse for the countless killings committed by the Crips.

“Is Williams’ redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?” Schwarzenegger wrote less than 12 hours before the execution.

“Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”

Williams’ supporters were disappointed with the governor’s refusal to commute the death sentence to life in prison without parole.

“The governor’s 96-hour wait to give an answer was a cowardly act and was torturous,” said former “M*A*S*H” star Mike Farrell, a death penalty opponent.

“I would suggest that had he the courage of his convictions he could have gone over to San Quentin and met with Stanley Williams himself and made a determination rather than letting his staff legal adviser write this garbage.”

Williams stood to become the 12th person executed in California since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977.

He was condemned in 1981 for gunning down convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven in Whittier and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and the couple’s daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned. Williams claimed he was innocent.

Just before the governor announced his decision, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals denied Williams’ request for a reprieve, saying there was no “clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence.”

Later in the evening, additional last-ditch requests to halt the execution were rejected by the US Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit and Schwarzenegger.

Just three hours before Williams was scheduled to die, his lawyers sent the governor a second request for a stay, saying a fourth witness who could help prove his innocence had come forward. The governor denied that request as well.

The last California governor to grant clemency was Ronald Reagan, who spared a mentally infirm killer in 1967. Schwarzenegger – a Republican who has come under fire from members of his own party as too accommodating to liberals – rejected clemency twice before during his two years in office.

Singer Joan Baez arrived at the prison gate as night fell. She sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot on a small plywood stage set up just outside the gates.

A contingent of 40 people who had walked the approximately 25 miles from San Francisco arrived earlier at the prison holding signs calling for an end to “state-sponsored murder.”

Others drawn to the site of the pending execution said they wanted to honour the memory of Williams’ victims.

In denying clemency to Williams, Schwarzenegger said that the evidence of his guilt was “strong and compelling,” and he dismissed suggestions that the trial was unfair.

Schwarzenegger also pointed out the brutality of the crimes, noting that Williams allegedly said about one of the killings, “You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him.”

According to the governor’s account, Williams then made a growling noise and laughed for five to six minutes.

In addition, the governor noted that Williams dedicated his 1998 book “Life in Prison” to a list of figures that included the black militant George Jackson - “a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems.”

Schwarzenegger also noted that there is “little mention or atonement in his writings and his plea for clemency of the countless murders committed by the Crips following the lifestyle Williams once espoused. The senseless killing that has ruined many families, particularly in African-American communities, in the name of the Crips and gang warfare is a tragedy of our modern culture.”

Williams and a friend founded the Crips in Los Angeles in 1971. Authorities say it is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.

Among the celebrities who took up Williams’ cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in Dead Man Walking; and Bianca Jagger.

During Williams’ 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.

“If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency,” defence attorney Peter Fleming asked, “what meaning does clemency retain in this state?”

Williams was moved to a “death watch cell” at around 4am GMT. Corrections Department spokeswoman Elaine Jennings described him as “co-operative and calm.”

Supporters and members of his legal team met with Williams before Schwarzenegger’s decision was announced.

The Rev Jesse Jackson, who joined death penalty opponents marching to the prison across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn, was seen leaving San Quentin.

The California Highway Patrol tightened security outside the prison, where hundreds of people were expected to rally.

At least publicly, the person apparently least occupied with his fate seemed to be Williams himself.

“Me fearing what I’m facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me?” Williams said in a recent interview. “If it’s my time to be executed, what’s all the ranting and raving going to do?”

**Peadar** · 13/12/2005, 12:10 PM

Williams’ request for clemency was denied by Schwarzenegger. A man who has made his fortune from the glorification of extreme violence.

Is the world a better place without Williams?
Would it be a better place without Schwarzenegger?

**joeSoap** · 13/12/2005, 12:37 PM

Originally Posted by Peadar

Is the world a better place without Williams?
Would it be a better place without Schwarzenegger?

Probably yes on both counts....

**Peadar** · 13/12/2005, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by joeSoap

Probably yes on both counts....

One of them was locked away behind bars though.

This execution has made him a huge cult hero now.

**Eire06** · 13/12/2005, 1:11 PM

I'm very against the death penalty for three main reasons...

1. Having criminals die is giving them the easy way out they should live their whole lives behind bars and have to live with what they have done...
2. There could have easily been a miscarriage of Justice which would result in the death of an innocent person..
3. Who has the right to say who lives and who dies... 'Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone'

Who is Schwarzenegger to think he can play God and say who can live and who cannot..

**Peadar** · 13/12/2005, 1:13 PM

Originally Posted by Eire06

Who is Schwarzenegger to think he can play God and say who can live and who cannot..

Don't you know he's the Terminator!

**paul_oshea** · 13/12/2005, 3:06 PM

1. Having criminals die is giving them the easy way out they should live their whole lives behind bars and have to live with what they have done...

well said. dont know if ye quoted them or not, but 3 very good points bar the let he who cast bit, there is a difference between stealing a bar of chocolate and murdering 4 people.

if someone is guilty beyound doubt though, i think they should be tortured at least twice weekly, i mean no one knows the pain (physical, whatever about the mental fear before it happens) of being shot/beatean/whatever to death. so at least that way there can be some justice for the murders committed by said person. putting someone behind bars is only a quarter of the way there a mon avis.

putting someone behind bars costs money though, killing them saves a lot of tax payers money, which is a big problem in kali-for-ni-A at the mo!!!

Don't you know he's the Terminator!

how ironic, how apt.

**Block G Raptor** · 13/12/2005, 3:22 PM

Originally Posted by Peadar

Don't you know he's the Terminator!

Originally Posted by paul_oshea

how ironic, how apt.

How Bad the taste
Jebus peadar you astound even me

**superfrank** · 13/12/2005, 4:12 PM

RIP Tookie. He did do it but he redeemed himself in my eyes.

**aido_b** · 13/12/2005, 4:28 PM

America is an absolute joke, typical poxy country that thinks it can play god. I followed tookies life well before the movie redemption was made and he did redeem himself, he had done wrong but was more use to the world alive rather than dead

**paul_oshea** · 13/12/2005, 4:42 PM

he had done wrong

you just have too!!!!

aido ye should come down to london for a weekend on the beer!!

**A face** · 13/12/2005, 4:55 PM

Question asked today ..... "but isn't it easier on the tax payers, not having to pay for them to be keep locked for life"

Discuss !!!

**Block G Raptor** · 13/12/2005, 5:32 PM

Remember seeing a placard outside a jail in the us when someone else was being Murdered by the state
I Think It Said it all
"why do we kill people for killing people to show People that killing people is wrong?"

or as ghandi put it an "eye for an eye leaves both men blind"

execution is wrong end of
the American Idea is that execution is a deterent but they still have the highest murder rate in the world THE DETERRENT IS OBVIOUSLY NOT WORKING

**liam88** · 13/12/2005, 5:55 PM

In principle i'm agianst the death penalty-all good points made on here and there is soemthing slightly barbaric about a state where the goevernment injects people with poisons to make their organs explode.

However, with people like William's I wouldn't waste the energy campaigning against it. I'm not saying I condone execution-and I would activley campaign against all the people who have been 'executed' (murdered) in China for stealing CD's or food. But on a case by case basis I don't see why I should care what happened to this 'man'-who slaughtered four human beings, while there's genocide's in Burma and Darfur, people getting raped in London and child abductions in Surrey (to name just 4 instances which I can channel my energies into preventing!)
To be honest once someone has murdered or raped someone in cold blood (normally for greed) they don't deserve the time of day.

Just sad that this all goes on in the world

**Lim till i die** · 14/12/2005, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by aido_b

America is an absolute joke, typical poxy country that thinks it can play god. I followed tookies life well before the movie redemption was made and he did redeem himself, he had done wrong but was more use to the world alive rather than dead

I don't agree with all gang members being treated harshly as Americas gang-culture is as much down to gaping-wide inequalities in society as it is to racial minorities acting the scumbag, almost definitely more so. However, this guy was truly asking

Useful?? Locked in his cage?? The man helped found the Crips for fupp sake. He was a dirty nasty, piece of crap. Wonderful how all these people redeem themselves on death row but wouldn't it be even better if just once they managed to redeem themselves before murdering someone. He killed four people, good riddance.

As for some of the celebs on his side:
Snoop Dogg: Former Crip, Convicted crack-dealer
Jesse Jackson: Another pathetic attempt at stopping black-America from seeing what an uncle-Tom he is
Sean Penn: Bleeding heart, cry me a river, publicity seeeking arch-liberal and all round pain in the ar$e

In response to A face's post, if I was a tax payer then yes, I would be pi$$ed off at my tax money going to keeping pieces of dirt like "Tookie" in prison clothes and gruel.

**joeSoap** · 14/12/2005, 10:55 AM

Too much sympathy for 'Tookie' perhaps??

He was guilty of heinous crimes, and I wonder would he have found 'redemption' had he not been caught and sentenced.?

**Peadar** · 14/12/2005, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by joeSoap

I wonder would he have found 'redemption' had he not been caught and sentenced.?

He certainly wouldn't have has as much free time on his hands for reflection.

**jebus** · 14/12/2005, 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by liam88

In principle i'm agianst the death penalty-all good points made on here and there is soemthing slightly barbaric about a state where the goevernment injects people with poisons to make their organs explode.

However, with people like William's I wouldn't waste the energy campaigning against it. I'm not saying I condone execution-and I would activley campaign against all the people who have been 'executed' (murdered) in China for stealing CD's or food. But on a case by case basis I don't see why I should care what happened to this 'man'-who slaughtered four human beings, while there's genocide's in Burma and Darfur, people getting raped in London and child abductions in Surrey (to name just 4 instances which I can channel my energies into preventing!)
To be honest once someone has murdered or raped someone in cold blood (normally for greed) they don't deserve the time of day.

Just sad that this all goes on in the world

Most sense made by anyone on this board in a long time. I can't really add anything extra to that so I'll just leave it as is