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?
Oh OK. HIS microphone as in the reporters microphone.
DOUG! YOU DA MAN!!! Our Beloved Michelle Malkin MENTIONS YOU BY NAME!!!!
WE LOVE YOU MICHELLE
(I got a personal response in an email from her once- I treasure it)
I'll bet that most of the anti-death penalty advocates are in favor of 12 yr old girls getting birth control and/or abortions without their parents permission as the front of the Planned Parenthood Information booklet shows.
Tookie is responsible for more Black-on-Black crime and Black incarcerations than any other person.
Didn't The Crips give us Crack Cocaine?
Ive been posting the link to those pictures but its better having them right on the page so people cant ignore the reality of what happened.
Can anyone confirm that?
Tookie Williams was a human POS just like OJ Simpson and and Scott Peterson, etc. Black folks better wise up and get with the program. Their "racism" bit ain't working no more!!! Blacks in the USA are passe by their own hand. Hispanics and Asians are the new minority movers and shakers!!!
This photos should be sent to every bastard who writes articles pro-williams. Probably to every major paper in the nation.
They should have charged Toookie with Hate Crimes before they executed him.
Yes, Stanley Jr. is in prison for 16 years for second degree murder. Another son, a registered sex offender, is being sought by Fontana police for forcing a sex act on a 14-year-old.
Next time, give people a choice on whether to view it or not. I know Tookie was a monster without having to see the results of the carnage. Its too much.
Very, very graphic and disturbing.
But Reality!
He supposedly co-authored several children's books with writer and activist Barbara Becnel. They are being sold on eBay. Coincidentally, my lyrics to TOOKIE GOT RUN OVER BY A GURNEY and my JOURNEY ON THE GURNEY limerick also sold on eBay. :)
Actually I was just posting the link to the pictures. People dont see enough of the carnage that is involved in crime, or in war for that matter, and I dont believe people can make completely sound arguments until they see the actual results of violence, no matter how hard to stomach.
Judge Mathis you are out of order!
Wasn't the "judge" also involved in the assault on Rev Jesse Lee Peterson at an event a couple of years ago?
Ogrish.org is the place to go to understand the true cost of war.
The pictures were there for a second, but now they are gone . I still don't believe I have to see anything that graphic to make a judgement about it.
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