Tookie Williams Is Executed
Stanley Tookie Williams, the gang founder and convicted murderer who claims innocence, convinced over 50,000 people to sign petitions asking that he not be executed.
But in the end, neither the courts nor the governor were persuaded to intervene and Williams was executed by means of lethal injection at 12:35 a.m. Tuesday at San Quentin, the California prison where he spent nearly half of his life.
Several dozen people held up signs outside the prison calling for an end to what they consider "state-sponsored murder." Others drawn to the site said they wanted to honor the memory of Williams' victims.
Monday, Williams ran out of options to live as he lost appeals made to a federal court, to the U.S. Supreme Court, and to the office of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
U.S. Supreme Court justices, without comment, refused to intervene and block the execution. The court's action was not a surprise, as justices rarely award stays in the last minute emergency appeals filed routinely on behalf of death row inmates.
Williams, 51, co-founder of the Crips street gang, had been appealing a decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals which said there was no "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence" in the case.
Williams had said in his appeal that he should have been allowed to argue at his trial that someone else killed one of the four victims, and that shoddy forensics connected him to the other killings.
Williams was convicted of four murderers during two 1979 holdups: Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at a Los Angeles motel the family owned, and Albert Owens, 26, a 7-Eleven clerk gunned down in Whittier.
Monday afternoon, Califorina Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to block Williams' execution, rejecting the notion that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had atoned for his crimes and found redemption on death row.
Williams
and requested that none of his family or friends be among the witnesses allowed to watch the execution.Williams' case became one of the United States' biggest death row cause célèbre 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 rehabilitated himself by writing children's books about the dangers of gangs.
Schwarzenegger suggested Monday that Williams'
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."
Schwarzenegger was unswayed by pleas from Hollywood stars and petitions from more than 50,000 people.
"After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency," Schwarzenegger said, less than 12 hours before the execution. "The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this case."
Schwarzenegger could have commuted the death sentence to life in prison without parole.
In his five-page ruling, Schwarzenegger made note of Williams' efforts to tell kids to stay away from gangs, but the governor indicated that was not enough to set aside the jury's decision.
During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.
Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.
In prison, Williams was seen by some as a
" At first, he was such a dangerous and difficult prisoner that he was kept in solitary confinement for six years. But since, Williams has been portrayed in film as a positive influence.Williams' execution is the 12th in California since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a brief hiatus.
Opponents of Williams' death staged demonstrations and held prayer vigils, arguing that
."If he is killed, it will not make us any safer, will not make us any more secure, will not deter crime," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, speaking out against the execution.
The last time a California governor granted clemency was in 1967, when Ronald Reagan spared a mentally ill killer. 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.
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"; Bianca Jagger; and former "MASH" star Mike Farrell.
"If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked, "what meaning does clemency retain in this state?"
As word spread this afternoon that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had turned down Stanley Tookie Williams' bid for clemency, reaction was muted on the streets where Williams launched the Crips gang 35 years ago.
Some residents were saddened by the news, saying the governor had missed a golden opportunity to show true compassion. Others, though, felt anything but compassion for the man whose legacy in South-Central Los Angeles still seems like nothing but gang colors, bullets and blood.
"There's not a lot of anger over the governor's decision," said Julio Ramos, a social worker at All Peoples Christian Center in South-Central, which offers a gang-intervention program for middle-school kids. "A lot of people feel Tookie Williams is getting what he deserved."
John Johnson, another social worker downtown whose clients include former gang members, put it this way: "Every time a young black male or female dies from gang violence, an intelligent person would see that the guy who started this gang to begin with should be held responsible for his actions."
CBSNews.com legal analyst Andrew Cohen said despite the media attention, he doesn't think this case will have lingering national ramifications.
"Each state handles these capital cases differently and obviously Williams presents unique questions and issues — That's why so many people are paying so much attention," Cohen said. "But I don't think his fate... will determine the fate of others."