Stars Rally Behind Gang Leader

Celebrities Urge Clemency For Crips Co-Founder On Death Row

(CBS/AP) 
Lora Owens, stepmother of victim Albert Owens, opposes clemency and resents the celebrity involvement.

"I think most of them are abusing their popularity and their access to the media," she said. "It's an agenda. If they looked at the facts, then they'd realize Williams has not done anything to deserve clemency."

Williams' link to the entertainment world was cemented with the biographical movie shown on TV and at film festivals, including Robert Redford's Sundance. Several of those involved in "Redemption," including Foxx and co-star Lynn Whitfield, have become backers.

"If Stan Tookie Williams had been born in Connecticut in the same type of situation, and was a white man, he would have been running a company," Foxx told the AP when the film aired last year on FX. "But, born a black man who has the capability of having brute strength and the capability of being smart in the ways of the world, he's going to get into what he gets into."

Williams' support is particularly deep among blacks but extends much further, said Farrell. Working with Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Farrell gathered signatures from more than 100 religious leaders, lawmakers and others of prominence for a clemency request that went to the governor Monday. Among those whose names are attached: NAACP Chairman Julian Bond; U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Harry Belafonte; Bonnie Raitt and Russell Crowe.

Is there reason to think that Schwarzenegger's Hollywood ties might make him more receptive to celebrity pleas?

"No," Farrell said flatly. "One would hope that because he comes out of an industry beyond the political world that he's less subject to the pressures of politics but, unfortunately, his career hasn't demonstrated that."

So far, Schwarzenegger hasn't said much about the execution, other than that he views it as a complex subject.

"It's never a fun thing to do. You're dealing with someone's life," he told reporters.

Williams' lawyers have requested a meeting with Schwarzenegger but haven't gotten a commitment.

The famous have long rallied to high-profile prisoners, including American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of killing two FBI agents, and Jack Henry Abbott, whose jailhouse letters to novelist Norman Mailer were published as "In the Belly of the Beast." Abbott's release, which Mailer supported largely because of the convict's writing talent, ended tragically when he fatally stabbed a young man six weeks after being released. Back in prison, Abbott committed suicide.

Such celebrity campaigns rankle victim advocates. Nancy Ruhe, executive director of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, argues that they glamorize a man like Williams and confer unwarranted role-model status.

"He becomes someone to look up to," Ruhe said. "There are so many people in our country you can look up to, but most certainly it should not be someone who has murdered several people."

If Schwarzenegger commutes Williams' sentence to life imprisonment, it would be the first time a California governor has done so since 1967. That's when Ronald Reagan — the last actor-turned-politico to govern California — spared the life of Calvin Thomas, a 27-year-old man convicted in a firebombing that killed his girlfriend's toddler son. His lawyers argued that Thomas was brain-damaged.

Comparing Schwarzenegger and Reagan, veteran political reporter and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon sees a key difference: The future U.S. president had quickly made the transition from actor to leader, while Schwarzenegger, as Cannon sees it, still is struggling with the metamorphosis.

"I don't think he's going to be dismissive of these (stars), because they're from his community, but ultimately that's not going to make his decision," said Cannon. "He'll decide it on the merits."

Whitfield, who came to know Williams while preparing to film "Redemption," said those merits are self-evident.

"I don't think of myself as speaking as a celebrity. I come with the advantage of having delved into his story," she said. "No one has said, 'Can you just open up the gates and let Stan be a free man in the world.' ... But he at least can continue to do the work he's doing."