Posted on 12/13/2005 9:46:20 AM PST by doug from upland
***scroll for rolling updates***
It's a zoo outside San Quentin prison, where convicted murderer/Crips gang co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams is scheduled to die by injection at San Quentin Prison at 12:01am Pacific time for murdering four people during two 1979 holdups. Live KPIX video feed outside San Quentin here. (Hat tip: Reader Dave.) Photos via readers and Yahoo!:
Jesse Jackson, the racial demagogue-turned-wannabe Death Row gawker, is desperately lobbying to be one of Tookie Williams' execution witnesses, according to cable news reports.
Reader Doug from Upland e-mails that the crusading Rev. Jackson did not know the names of Williams' victims when asked by KFI-AM radio talk show hosts John and Ken.
[Update: Reader Denise R. writes, "I was listening to [KFI host] John Zi[e]gler, he actually asked Jesse Jackson the names of the victims on a couple of occasions and his microphone was taken from him by Judge Mathis (the TV judge) and broken. He also was pushed by Jackson supporters, after that happened he was forced away from Jackson by Sheriff's Deputies.]
On MSNBC this evening, host Tucker Carlson told his "friend" Al Sharpton that he would spare him embarassment by not asking him the names of the victims.
Why would he do that? Guess he didn't want to ruin the freak show vibe.
***
As the execution hour approaches, keep the focus where it belongs.
THE NAMES OF THE VICTIMS:
ALBERT OWENS
TSAI-SHAI YANG
YEN-I YANG
YE-CHEN LIN
Patterico sums it up:
"Tonight should be about honoring their memory, and bringing justice for their deaths."
Amen.
***
12am EDT: Press conference with San Quentin prison official. There will be 39 people witnessing the execution--including 17 members of the media and 5 witnesses approved by Williams. Official will not reveal identity of Williams' five witnesses "for privacy reasons." If Jackson is one of the five, it won't be private for long.
***
Read these sober reflections from Captain's Quarters, The Anchoress, and Baldilocks.
The Los Angeles Times has news analysis of Schwarzenegger's decision not to grant clemency. An excerpt:
"Stanley Williams insists he is innocent, and that he will not and should not apologize or otherwise atone for the murders," Schwarzenegger wrote. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption."
The evidence of guilt, the governor's statement said, included testimony from two of Williams' accomplices, ballistics evidence linking Williams' shotgun to the murders and testimony from four people that Williams had at different times confessed to one or both murders.
Moreover, he said, after Williams' arrest, he conspired to escape "by blowing up a jail transportation bus and killing the deputies guarding" it. Although the escape was never carried out, "there are detailed escape plans in Williams' own handwriting," the statement said, adding that an escape plan is "consistent with guilt, not innocence."
Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson said she thought that Williams' clemency bid was plagued from the start by his position that he would never acknowledge that he committed the four murders.
"I will never admit capital crimes that I did not commit — not even to save my life," Williams wrote in his 2004 autobiography "Blue Rage, Black Redemption." He repeated that position Monday afternoon in a conversation with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jackson told reporters.
"Tookie wanted to have it both ways — he wanted to maintain his actual innocence claim so that he would have something to argue in the courts, but he still wanted to claim that he had been redeemed," Levenson said. "In the end, he lost on both fronts."
Rick Moran has an good round-up and writes a note to Tookie: Shake hands with the devil for me.
Ward Churchill bloviates.
Bruce Armstrong will blog through the execution hour.
SFChron writer Kevin Fagan describes the execution protocol.
***
Question: Did Tookie supporter Jamie Foxx skip Terrell Owens' birthday party? Did Jesse Jackson get a rain check? (Hat tip: readers Andrew and Braun)
256am. One final, last-ditch appeal for delay by Williams' lawyers is rejected.
An estimated 2,000 gathered outside, shouting and obstructing a FOX News analyst doing a live shot.
The San Francisco Chronicle highlights the circus.
***
Previous:
The Tookie Files: Arnold's choice
12/11 Tookie Files: Tension builds
12/6 Tookie Files: Surprising dissents
11/30 Tookie Watch
11/26 The Tookie Files
11/22/00 Peace prize for a murderer?
Jackson,"You know that guy that made funny sounds as blood came out of the back of his head".
The verbal description of Jesse Jackson as a "racial demagogue-turned-wannabe Death Row gawker" is both far too kind and inaccurate. One more fitting would be "vile racist huckster and extortionist...".
I really dont get this line of thinking. An apology for murdering 4 people would not change the fact that he deserved death for his crimes.
Great work, DFU....mega bump.
Judge Mathis's sponsors should be inundated with boycott threats. What an attack on the 1st Amendment.
Absolutely part of his strategy - he believed that he would get clemency and then the next step would be to get a movement going for a new trial and acquital leading to freedom and a life of celebrity and fortune. Nice plan if it had worked.
Hey, they probably don't have very many Nobel nominated children's book authors in hell - he can be a celebrity there!
I think if Tookie actually made a confession, and apology to the victims, he might have received life. The problem is that the Tookie team was trying to get life and then the possibility of getting out of prison.
I fully expect some of that Manson clan to get kicked loose on one of those hearings....
Does this mean that Jesse Jackson is a member in good standing of the Crips? Something is seriously wrong in that dude's head!! What little credibility Jesse had is now shot all to hell, along with Tookie's soul!
This was Arnie's way of saying:
"Hey - The schmuck didn't even TRY. Drop him like a bad habit."
"Don't be botherin' me with no names!!!! I'm pickin' my next 'cause'!!!!"
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"his microphone was taken from him by Judge Mathis (the TV judge) and broken"
I am missing it here. Is Judge Mathis for or against Jesse?
Didn't he attack Rev. Jesse Peterson at some fuction?
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-prs/
Not only does he not know the victim's names, he does not care to know the victim's names.
Democrats are particular who they have compassion for.
And now for something completely different, Jesse Jackson with a tape recorder up his nose.
ALBERT OWENS
TSAI-SHAI YANG
YEN-I YANG
YE-CHEN LIN
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