Tookie Williams (convicted murderer) desires clemency

[Guns N RockMusic]

Let Tookie Williams Die
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 1, 2005


TOOKIE WILLIAMS WROTE JUVENILE LITERATURE SO INSPIRING, IT?S A PITY HIS VICTIMS NEVER GOT TO READ IT TO THEIR CHILDREN. Last night, the California State Supreme Court refused to grant a stay of execution to convicted murderer and co-founder of the deadly street gang the Crips, Stanley ?Tookie? Williams Sr. Short of a governor?s pardon, Tookie will (finally) die by lethal injection in San Quentin on December 13 for the brutal murder of four people in 1979. A group of Hollywood?s limousine ?liberals,? radical leftists, and Farrakhanites now urge Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (whom they otherwise despise) to grant clemency ? and he has granted them a private hearing next week to discuss the matter. We wish he?d instead offer them front row seats to the blessed event.

Tookie Williams founded the Crips in 1971, eight years before he and three other men went on a murder-and-robbery spree that netted approximately $250 and left four people dead. The murders were notably gratuitous. Albert Owens ? the clerk in Whittier, California ? lay prostrate on the floor of a back room as Williams shot him twice in the back. Williams told one of the three men who went along on the job he killed Owens because he didn?t want any witnesses to identify him and ?because he was white and he was killing all white people.? He then robbed the Brookhaven Motel, in the process murdering an elderly Chinese couple and their daughter (whom he referred to as ?Buddhaheads?). Tookie killed all his victims with a 12-gauge shotgun, which he held inches from their quivering bodies before pulling the trigger to inflict maximum damage.

 

Clemency was not Williams? first option: escape was. Within weeks of his capture, he devised a plan; he would have two accomplices meet the van that transported the quartet from prison to the courthouse. They would kill the two deputies on board, and Williams would kill the one prisoner who could act as a witness against him in the Owens murder. The survivors would then dynamite the van, so authorities would not immediately know who escaped. Williams went on to plot subsequent escapes, assault prison guards, and order gangland murders from behind bars. His violence and intransigence got him six years in solitary confinement.

 

After the escape plans fizzled, he exploited California?s leftist judicial establishment to the fullest, but the evidence against him was so overwhelming even the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals could not overturn his conviction.

 

In the last 11 years, Tookie got smart and embarked on a massive PR campaign to portray himself as a ?redeemed? former gang member, writing children?s books against the gang mentality. In the process, he became the Left?s latest noble savage. Nearly 20 years after being sentenced to murder, Tookie got to meet Winnie Mandela, Louis Farrakhan, and other VIPs; last Monday, Jesse Jackson and Bianca Jagger dropped by the cellblock. Williams was nominated for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. (The committee rejected him, either because he did not sufficiently criticize U.S. foreign policy or because he had not killed enough people to qualify.)

 

Williams? purported chrysalis convinced Tinseltown?s Mumia Abu Jamal groupies to beg his clemency: Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Mike Farrell, former Crip Snoop Doggy Dogg, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Jamie Foxx, and Bonnie Raitt ? not to mention such washed-up ?80s leftists as Desmond Tutu, Mario Cuomo, and Jesse Jackson ? have asked that his sentence be commuted. Sixties radical Tom Hayden has vouched for Tookie?s ?transformation,? although admitting Tookie Williams? supposed change of heart ?is not the primary cause of [gang] truces.? (Emphasis in original.)

 

At a ?Save the Peacemaker? rally last weekend, Nation of Islam Western Regional Minister Tony Muhammad (standing in for grand mullah Louis Farrakhan himself) said the United States murdered millions of Indians, which makes it the real criminal:

 

This government needs clemency from God itself. Our president needs clemency; a president who has murdered tens of thousands on foreign soil. He needs to show that he is a redeemed man, and even in that act, President Bush can call for the clemency of Stan ?Tookie? Williams.

 

He then told Gov. Schwarzenegger, ?If you execute, you destroy the hopes of hundreds of young men and women who have gotten involved in gang culture.?

 

Despite his alleged turnaround, prison officials state Williams is still involved with the Crips, directing action from his jail cell for the past eleven years. San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittendon notes Tookie still maintains an ?unusually large bank account,? being mailed checks 50 or 100 times larger than those other inmates (like Scott Peterson) receive. Not only has he never admitted guilt in the murder ? much less expressed any remorse ? and continues to consort with Crips in prison.

 

And he?s never helped the one force that could effectively stop the Crips: the Los Angeles Police Department. Tookie Williams has revealed nothing about the personnel, practices, or operational structure of the gang he co-founded. In his writings, he boasts he ?underwent many years of soul-searching and re-education, without ?debriefing? (another word for ?snitching?).? Snitching, he says, would ?rip my dignity out of my chest? ? an unfortunate image for a man who shot (at least) four people through the torso at close range.

 

Tookie?s good example failed to rub off on those closest to him. The California penal system seems to be holding a Williams family reunion. His son, Stanley ?Little Tookie? Williams Jr., serves alongside him in San Quentin, convicted on a 16-year sentence for second-degree murder of a 20-year-old woman. Another son, registered sex offender Lafayette Jones, is now wanted by Fontana, California, police for allegedly molesting an ex-girlfriend?s 13-year-old daughter at gunpoint, holding the child captive for six hours on the afternoon of on November 13.

 

Based on all this and more, L.A.?s top police officials have petitioned Schwarzenegger to reject clemency appeals.

 

Allowing Tookie Williams to receive the death sentence 24 years after it was imposed by a jury of his peers is not an outrage; the outrage is that thousands of Americans were conned into lavishing sympathy on this murderer instead of his victims and their families, that a street thug who?s learned to manipulate the Left enjoys glowing press coverage, a positive biopic, warm personal relations with Hollywood?s elite, and an honored position in the Crips. (And the New York Times probably considers even this cruel and unusual punishment.)

 

Opponents of the death penalty say a death sentence will keep Tookie from completing ?all the good work? he began in prison. This is part of the exchange when one commits certain heinous crimes: he forfeits the right even to do good works ? just as he denied his four victims the right to write children?s books, design socially constructive grade school curricula, or encourage people to ?reduce, reuse, and recycle.? His good works ? if there are any ? will be continued by good people, the kind who don?t end up on death row for carrying out repeated executions.

 

The Left claims the death penalty is no deterrent but Tookie?s ?powerful story of redemption? is, showing children they, too, could wind up incarcerated. If his incarceration serves as a deterrent against gang violence, his death will make a more ?powerful? tale yet. If it doesn?t, his execution will not interfere with that. Either way, weakness and surrender are never a deterrent ? to totalitarians, terrorists, or common street thugs. 

 

I?m not a father confessor, but I?m fairly certain of this moral arithmetic: Writing children?s books is not an appropriate penance for killing an entire family in as bloody a way as possible, dedicating his entire life to a ruthless pursuit of violence, and founding an organization that has trapped generations of inner city youths into the same destructive cycle. Whether Tookie Williams has achieved ?redemption? is not a concern of the state ? as the idolatrous, secular Left would have it (?immanentizing the eschaton? as William F. Buckley Jr. called it) ? it is a matter to be decided when Stanley Williams Sr. stands before a Higher Authority. Which meeting should arranged with all speed

[Genesis]

I don't know what all the confusion is about... Kill the bastard.

[journey]

What he did was wrong, and he should never be released from prison. But I don't think killing him will solve anything.

I personally don't support the death penalty. I think it's a double standard of ethics. For example, if it's against the law to murder someone, then why is it ok for the law to kill someone? That's my arugement. People who murder should be punished, but putting them to death is a form of revenge.

The death penalty seems ineffective. Murders happen everyday regardless of the threat of death row. Criminals are unphased by this method.

[jameslofton29]

He should be killed in the same way he killed his victims. But since he is a founding member of a gang, everybody worships the freak.

[Booker Floyd]

This article, like nearly every article this poster shares with the board, is stilted trash.

I strongly agree with the death penalty in principle, but cannot support it in practice.  Theres no greater injustice a government can commit than to put to death an innocent citizen, and that possibility alone prevents me from supporting it.  An innocent person subjected to life in prison may be equally tragic and agonizing, but its not death.  And while Im almost willing to accept such a decision based on "super-evidence" (video or credible confession, basically), Im unable to shake the inherent implication that while an individual serving life is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, theyre not really as guilty as the guy being sentenced to death.  Its a hard conclusion to make, and I desperately want to support capital punishment - in a perfect system I absolutely would.  In this system, however, I cant. 

[Skeba]

I personally don't support the death penalty. I think it's a double standard of ethics. For example, if it's against the law to murder someone, then why is it ok for the law to kill someone? That's my arugement. People who murder should be punished, but putting them to death is a form of revenge.

I don't support the death penalty either, but there's a problem with your logic there.

For example, if it's against the law to hold a person prisoner against his will, why is it ok for the 'law' to hold someone prisoner against their will?

[Izzy]

Despite his alleged turnaround, prison officials state Williams is still involved with the Crips, directing action from his jail cell for the past eleven years. San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittendon notes Tookie still maintains an ?unusually large bank account,? being mailed checks 50 or 100 times larger than those other inmates (like Scott Peterson) receive. Not only has he never admitted guilt in the murder ? much less expressed any remorse ? and continues to consort with Crips in prison.

Think thats says it all

The death penalty is immoral, the product of human instinct we really shouldn't allow to direct policy

Its natural to seek revenge, but the state, as a cold detached entity, should know better

The death penalty doesn't seem to deter anyone - i'd much rather they rot in jail than die painlessly.

If life imprisonment meant that the death penalty would be redundant

In the UK life imprisonement is 25 years. No joke. This country is such a mess.....

[Guns N RockMusic]

This article, like nearly every article this poster shares with the board, is stilted trash.
?

It's trash because it doesn't do lipservice to leftwingers? ?Do you think you're gonna find an oped with the details of this piece of shit's life on any media outlet save Fox - and even then maybe only on O'Reilly or Hannity and Colmes, neither of which are "news". ?No, everywhere this is going to be brought up it will read "Nobel prize nominee and former Crip who dedicated his life to halt gang violence....", in other words liberal spin with some screen shots of Schwarzenegger, Surandon and Jackson. ?I'm sorry Booker, I'll stary getting my articles from moveon and infowars.com so we can all shake each other's dicks and agree how evil conservatives and their beliefs are.

[Doc Emmett Brown]

This article, like nearly every article this poster shares with the board, is stilted trash.

What we need is an op-ed article from the other Side, and as usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.  The difference is, my article sheds some light on the use of clemency in our nation's history.  'Clemency for a Crip?', Mark Essig, NY Times.

[...]
In legal terms, clemency can refer to both outright pardons and commutations to lesser sentences. The practice is as old as capital punishment itself. Pilate, after a voice vote of the gathered throng, granted clemency to Barabbas rather than to Jesus.

In the United States, a request for clemency shifts a case from the judicial to the executive branch. In the process, the question changes from whether the prisoner is guilty to whether he deserves mercy. In our colonial period and the early days of the republic, roughly half of those sentenced to death were pardoned. The appeals court system at this time was rudimentary at best, and clemency was about the only way to correct errors at trial or to consider facts that came to light after conviction - and thus to keep the innocent from being hanged.

Often, however, clemency was granted to the guilty as well as the innocent. Before the rise of the penitentiary system in the 19th century, the death penalty was virtually the only punishment available for serious crimes, and it was applied broadly, for rape and robbery as well as for murder. When two young men in 18th-century North Carolina were condemned for counterfeiting, the governor issued a pardon because their crimes could be attributed to "the unsteadiness of youth." The death penalty painted justice with a broad brush, and clemency offered a way to consider finer details.

Mercy was also used to make a moral point. In 1731, two condemned burglars in Philadelphia were hoisted onto a cart that also contained their coffins and paraded through the streets to the gallows, where nooses were placed around their necks. Only then did the sheriff read the men's pardon, which he had carried with him from the jail.

The authorities in many cities performed this sort of theater of the last-minute pardon as a way to dramatize both the severity of the law and its mercy. (This sort of thing became so common that prisoners came to expect it, and some were surprised when the gallows trap opened and plunged them into the void.)

By the 20th century, clemency had become less stagy but no less common. Records show that from 1909 to 1954, North Carolina governors, for example, granted clemency in a third of all death sentences. Florida commuted a quarter of its death sentences from 1924 to 1966.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the practice has nearly disappeared. There have been 999 executions, leaving 3,400 prisoners remaining on death row, and yet only 230 people have been granted clemency on humanitarian grounds (171 of them as part of the blanket grant of clemency in 2003 in Illinois stemming from flaws in the state's judicial system).

What happened? The Supreme Court got involved, as did politics. In its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court rendered every state's capital punishment law unconstitutional, leading to a transformation of the death penalty. Once a matter left largely to the states, the death penalty became deeply enmeshed in constitutional law, and long appeals became standard.

In some ways, the system improved: cases once appropriate only for clemency - condemnations of the obviously innocent, minors or the mentally incapacitated - were now usually handled by the courts.

But another, less benign cause for clemency's decline has been political. In the 1970's - spurred by voters' fears of rising crime rates - politicians discovered an advantage in appearing to be tough on crime. That is why the decision by Virginia's governor, Mark Warner, to grant clemency to a convicted murderer on Tuesday, on the grounds of evidence that had disappeared, made national headlines.

If Governor Schwarzenegger were to allow this prisoner to go to his death, he would suffer little political damage. Tookie Williams fits no one's definition of innocence. He was convicted of murdering four people - a 7-Eleven clerk shot twice in the back during a holdup, and three members of a family during a robbery at a motel - and as a leader of the Crips he set in motion a criminal enterprise that destroyed countless lives.

But his notoriety, his former viciousness, is precisely what gives him credibility in his current work - persuading young people to avoid gangs. His claim for clemency rests on the good work he is performing in prison, and that is a decision that the court system is not designed to handle. Rather, it is up to Governor Schwarzenegger to decide whether allowing Mr. Williams to continue living behind bars might better serve society's interests than sending him to his death - that is, to decide whether that older conception of clemency still has a place in our culture. (As he weighs this decision, Mr. Schwarzenegger might consider that the last California governor to grant clemency to a death-row inmate was his political hero, Ronald Reagan.)

Commuting Mr. Williams's sentence would almost certainly bring charges that Mr. Schwarzenegger is soft on crime. But the governor has prided himself on being a political maverick. What better way to confirm his strength than by revealing the quality of his mercy?

Im unable to shake the inherent implication that while an individual serving life is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, theyre not really as guilty as the guy being sentenced to death.

yeah, that's the fulcrum in this see-saw.  Charles Manson vs. Tookie Williams.  Who gets to live and who gets to die. I agree that it's a difficult choice, but even without the knowledge of ALL evidence (as in your pefect world), does that really preclude the use of the death penalty?  I think the problem is the erratic use of it for political reasons. If it was applied every time to every case for which there was enough evidence to prove guilt, would that deter people from committing heinous crimes?

[Walk]

The death penalty is immoral, the product of human instinct we really shouldn't allow to direct policy

The state cannot make moral judgements, since that violates the 1st amendment. It works only with logic, and only in its own interests.

Its natural to seek revenge, but the state, as a cold detached entity, should know better

Why? The state has no feelings or issues with executing its will. This is the nature of government.

The death penalty doesn't seem to deter anyone - i'd much rather they rot in jail than die painlessly.

The purpose of the death penalty is retribution, not to deter people.

If life imprisonment meant that the death penalty would be redundant

In the UK life imprisonement is 25 years. No joke. This country is such a mess.....

Life imprisonment is a bad idea. The death penalty is more efficient.

[Booker Floyd]

I think the problem is the erratic use of it for political reasons. If it was applied every time to every case for which there was enough evidence to prove guilt, would that deter people from committing heinous crimes?

Im not sure, but Im doubtful. ?You have to wonder how often the severity of punishment actually weighs into the decision-making of a perpetrator of such crimes. ?Does a psychopath intent on murdering a child think the act is worth committing only if hell serve life in prison instead of getting death? ?If somebody is capable of killing a child, for instance, are they really rational enough to give significant consideration to the legal ramifications? ?So again, I do support the principle behind the death penalty, I dont exactly buy the deterrent rationale.

[journey]

I personally don't support the death penalty. I think it's a double standard of ethics. For example, if it's against the law to murder someone, then why is it ok for the law to kill someone? That's my arugement. People who murder should be punished, but putting them to death is a form of revenge.

I don't support the death penalty either, but there's a problem with your logic there.

For example, if it's against the law to hold a person prisoner against his will, why is it ok for the 'law' to hold someone prisoner against their will?

Murderers, rapists, etc. are a threat to society. They put people's lives in danger. And further more, they're not being held against their will in prison. They chose to be there.

[SLCPUNK]

This article, like nearly every article this poster shares with the board, is stilted trash.

From a right wing website too......imagine that.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

Regardless of where this article came from, why does this man deserve clemency?  As well as the victims who lost their livres to this man, how many other lives did this man shatter by his murders? If the man has no respect for human life , we should not respect his life.

[SLCPUNK]

Regardless of where this article came from, why does this man deserve clemency?  As well as the victims who lost their livres to this man, how many other lives did this man shatter by his murders? If the man has no respect for human life , we should not respect his life.

I am not totally against the death penalty. I think the standard should be proof without a shadow of a doubt: DNA, video etc. Something that is irrefutable proof of the crime. Too many of these guys are getting killed on witness testimony or circumstantial evidence alone. Those convicted on that evidence should be given life without parole, to leave a window open for an off chance that something more sound may come forward to prove their innocence (or guilt as it may be.)

[Dr. Blutarsky]

Regardless of where this article came from, why does this man deserve clemency?? As well as the victims who lost their livres to this man, how many other lives did this man shatter by his murders? If the man has no respect for human life , we should not respect his life.

I am not totally against the death penalty. I think the standard should be proof without a shadow of a doubt: DNA, video etc. Something that is irrefutable proof of the crime. Too many of these guys are getting killed on witness testimony or circumstantial evidence alone. Those convicted on that evidence should be given life without parole, to leave a window open for an off chance that something more sound may come forward to prove their innocence (or guilt as it may be.)

I agree the death penalty should be reserved for the harshest crimes where there is no reasonable doubt of guilt. One criminal that absolutely deserves to die who was caught on video abducting his  11 year old victim in Sarasota FL is Joseph Smith. How can a person like that be rehabilitated?

[SLCPUNK]

One criminal that absolutely deserves to die who was caught on video abducting his  11 year old victim in Sarasota FL is Joseph Smith. How can a person like that be rehabilitated?

Yea, fuck him. Something like that guy, I wouldn't blink an eye if he got snuffed out tomorrow. Although the idea of him being a wife in prison for a few years  isn't that bad either.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

One criminal that absolutely deserves to die who was caught on video abducting his? 11 year old victim in Sarasota FL is Joseph Smith. How can a person like that be rehabilitated?

Yea, fuck him. Something like that guy, I wouldn't blink an eye if he got snuffed out tomorrow. Although the idea of him being a wife in prison for a few years? isn't that bad either.

Now theres an idea. Let him be someones boyfriend before he gets put to death.

[RichardNixon]

Why I am against the death penalty:

1. It's not a deterrent. Or rather, it is a deterrent, but no more so than life imprisonment.
2. It's inhumane. No one has the right to take the life of another person--whether it be in an armed robbery, or state sanctioned.
3. In the past, people who have been put to death have later been found to be innocent. It's going to happen again in the future--even with DNA testing, it will happen. And just one innocent person put to death is one too many.
4. It's fundamentally racist. I don't have exact statistics, but blacks make up about half the people on death row, yet blacks account for only 13 percent of the population.

[Izzy]

The death penalty is immoral, the product of human instinct we really shouldn't allow to direct policy

The state cannot make moral judgements, since that violates the 1st amendment. It works only with logic, and only in its own interests.

I see....

The purpose of the death penalty is retribution, not to deter people.

I think thats whats called ''contradicting yourself'' - so the state can't make a moral judgement and deals with logic - but instigates the death penalty due to a human desire for revenge!

Wakey wakey!

Life imprisonment is a bad idea. The death penalty is more efficient.

And u wonder why people call u a fascist - more ''efficient'', Rudolf Hoess and u would have been such good mates.