I should we should pardon him ...
Posted on 12/11/2005 2:25:45 PM PST by indcons
A lawyer for convicted murderer and co-founder of the Crips street gang Stanley Tookie Williams, who is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday, is asking the California Supreme Court to stay his execution.
Pasadena Attorney Verna Wefald also filed a 150-page petition Saturday challenging the validity of the four convictions and death sentences meted out to Williams in 1981, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Williams has been the subject of a celebrity-studded clemency campaign -- including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx -- based on a claim that he has redeemed himself with anti-gang work from death row.
Williams has written nine anti-gang books aimed at young people, been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace and Literature Prize, and his "Protocol for Street Peace" has been used by rival gangs to broker gang truces.
Williams was convicted of killing a man during a robbery in February 1979. Williams also was convicted of the March 1979 murders of a couple and their daughter at a South Los Angeles motel.
Williams has consistently denied he committed the murders, although he has apologized for his role as a co-founder of the Crips, a gang considered responsible for numerous murders in Los Angeles and beyond.
Williams, 51, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison on Tuesday.
However, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office is currently weighing the request for clemency.
On Saturday, Schwarzenegger's office said that the governor had not made a decision.
The California Supreme Court, a federal court judge in Los Angeles, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court have all upheld Williams' convictions.
The petition filed Saturday night alleges that an "error of constitutional magnitude led to a trial that was so fundamentally unfair absent the error no reasonable judge or jury would have convicted" him.
Wefald argues that prosecutors failed to disclose at trial that witness Alfred Coward was not a U.S. citizen and that he had a violent criminal history. depriving Williams of the opportunity to argue Coward was the killer in the February 1979 robbery.
"All of the witnesses who implicated … Williams were criminals who were given significant incentives to testify against him and ongoing benefits for their testimony," Wefald wrote in the stay petition.
"This type of testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in murder and capital cases in the United States," she wrote, citing a study done at the Northwestern University Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions.
Wefald also alleged that the prosecution failed to make known that Williams was "forcibly, involuntarily, surreptitiously and continually drugged with powerful tranquilizers and/or other psychotropic medication by the Los Angeles County jail as a form of management control, thus rendering him incompetent to stand trial."
Fearing a repeat of the 1992 race riots in which 52 people died, police, schools and community groups have been told to prepare for violence if clemency is not granted.
Robin Toma, executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, said the organization had received "credible" threats of violence if Williams is put to death.
There are also fears that Williams' execution could cause unrest in the prison system.
For that reason, all prisoners at San Quentin will be locked down during the execution, and there is the expectation that other state prisons will choose to do the same.
A California governor has not granted clemency since 1967, when Ronald Reagan spared the life of a brain-damaged killer.
Tookie Tookie Tookie
All I can say is he is about 10 years past due.
Man oh man, is tookie still alive, somebody put him out of his misery,,,hello hello, Aaaaaaahrnold, can you hear me????
I thought I heard on the radio that Schwarzenegger granted a stay and changed it to life in prison. Is this true?
Too friggin' bad the FOUR people this nutball killed can't get a stay of their execution .... eh, Tooks?
Kind of reminds me of my daughter when she was three or four years old - she didn't get her way, she'd throw a tantrum.
Just let another gang member kill him in his cell and avoid all this publicity.
LOL.......
He should be executed for the sake of children!!
Pure, unadulterated, silly-ass horse-crap.
Just more Tookie-Pookie spam.
To hell with him.
After he fries, of course.
Tookie must die.
As if Tookie wrote those books and not his supporters.
I heard Danny Faulker's widow (he was the cop killed by Mumia al Jamal) on Philly radio today talking about how the same clowns behind Mumia are now marching for Tookie. Figures.
After his "crossing over," I'll be more than pleased to sing that old favorite: "One Took Over The Line."
California gangs are now threatening violence to prevent being punished for committing violent crimes. If this works for them, there will be no saving California from anarchy.
>I thought I heard on the radio that Schwarzenegger granted a stay and changed it to life in prison. Is this true?<
If true, the Schwaggernegger is the ultimate 'girly man' for letting his wife (and her family and party) and his Hollywood connections influence him and the threat of riots from the black community to intimidate him.
Holy crap! It's been 25 years since the conviction - enough is enough!!! I could kill a dozen people tomorrow in CA and not be executed until they wheeled me into the gas chamber in a wheelchair as an old man around 2030 or so.
Tookie, be a man and face up to your punishment you cowardly piece of sh**! As founder of the Crips, this monster has the blood of thousands of kids on his hands. No wonder he's afraid to meet his maker.
its not true. He's gonna make an announcement on Mon
Scratching my head here....now what could these two have in common.
We are being probed to see how intimidated we are by threats of violence by certain communities. We better get some balls on us cause it's not just muslims flexing their muscles lately.
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