Posted on 12/08/2005 9:10:24 AM PST by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO – One victim was a young convenience store clerk and military veteran who moved back to California to fight for custody of his daughters. The other three were family members who owned a motel they wanted to sell because the neighborhood had grown rough.
For all four, plans to change their lives were cut short by the sawed-off shotgun of Crips co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams during a pair of 1979 robberies in Los Angeles County that have put him on death row.
Their stories are part of the pitch prosecutors have made to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to deny clemency and let Williams die by lethal injection on Tuesday.
But most of the news coverage has focused on the criminal, not the crime. Family members say too much attention is being paid to Williams and too little is focused on their loved ones who got no second chances, no opportunities to turn their lives around.
With the help of prosecutors and victims' rights advocates, they plan to urge the governor today to consider their loss – store clerk Albert Owens, 26, and motel owners Yen-I Yang, 76, and Tsai-Shai Yang, 63, and their daughter Ye-Chen Lin, 43, who left behind shattered families and changed lives.
Williams contends that he's innocent, and his supporters say he is more valuable alive than dead as he works behind bars to keep young people away from gangs.
They want Schwarzenegger to reduce Williams' death sentence to life in prison without parole.
Williams, 51, co-founded the Crips gang in Los Angeles with a high school buddy when he was 17. He has since renounced his gangster past, spoken to community groups by phone from San Quentin State Prison, and co-written a series of children's books warning them about the dangers of a criminal life.
Schwarzenegger has agreed to hear from lawyers on both sides during a private one-hour meeting today. He has received letters from family members who say Williams deserves to die.
Owens' stepmother wrote that Williams caused her family 26 years of anguish. "His just punishment, his execution, could provide us some closure and peace," Lora Owens wrote.
In an interview, she said her husband died in 1995 and that one of his last concerns was justice for his son. "It was on his mind up to the very end," she said. "You just don't forget things like that."
Media efforts to track down surviving Yang family members weren't successful, but the state Attorney General's Office said they support the jury's verdict and oppose clemency.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Thank you for this.
Actually, if I were Arnie, I'd pardon every murderer in the state as payback for shooting down the reform initiatives. Then again, I'm a nasty guy when I'm angry.
Reminds me of the Eddie Murphy routine : "Kill mah lan'lor, KILL mah lan'lor!"
---I agree with your whole post, especially this last part.
Put another way, his "redemption" is really just self-pity -- extended to those he views as being like himself.
:)
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