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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will not decide on Saturday whether to grant clemency to former Crips gang leader Stanley Tookie Williams, who is slated to be executed on Tuesday for murdering four people in 1979, his office said. Barring clemency or last-minute court intervention, officials will administer a lethal injection to Williams at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday in the death chamber at San Quentin State Prison. The case has generated widespread interest and fierce debate over the death penalty in the United States because Williams, 51, has written a series of books warning young people against...

For residents of gang-ravaged area, debate on founder of Crips centers on transformation. Los Angeles -- In the heart of South Central Los Angeles, a place so immersed in the gang lifestyle that even the schools are affiliated with either the Crips or the Bloods, Shiloh Badili paints. The 52-year-old muralist, like many others in this impoverished flatland, knows what it is like to mourn a relative killed by what he calls "the meanness." He also knows, as everybody here knows, that Stanley Tookie Williams, the man scheduled to be executed Tuesday morning at San Quentin State Prison, played a...

I. INTRODUCTION On February 28, 1979, Stanley Williams murdered Albert Lewis Owens during a robbery of a 7-Eleven convenience store. On March 11, 1979, Stanley Williams murdered Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yee-Chen Lin during a robbery at their family run motel, the Brookhaven. In March of 1981, a jury convicted Stanley Williams of the first-degree murder and robbery of Albert Lewis Owens, the first-degree murders of Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yee-Chen Lin, and the robbery of Tsai-Shai Yang. The jury also found true the allegations that Williams personally used a shotgun during the commission of each of the...

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spent more than an hour with lawyers for Stanley Tookie Williams and prosecutors pushing for his death sentence Thursday, hearing final arguments before he makes a decision on Williams' bid to avoid lethal injection. Schwarzenegger now has fewer than four days to weigh Williams' past as a convicted four-time murderer and gang leader against his present work as an anti-gang crusader. Williams, who has written eight children's books from his Death Row cell, is pleading for clemency based on his value as "a unique voice'' against street violence, one of his attorneys said. The hearing,...

If at first you don't succeed in getting a once-respected international award for a four-time murderer, try a fifth time. That seems to be the motto of moonbat professor Philip Gasper, chairman of the philosophy and religion department at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont (northern California). "Professor" Gasper has, for the fifth consecutive year, nominated Stanley "Tookie" Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize. This is actually the sixth time Williams has been nominated, the first nomination coming from a member of the Swiss legislature. Here's the San Francisco Chronicle article on the nomination. I'll point out here, as...

Albert Lewis Owens came to Whittier to start over. Recently discharged from the Army and divorced from his wife, who retained custody of the couple's two daughters, he was ready for a new beginning, said his stepmother, Lora Owens. Owens had visited Southern California as a child, and it was the first place he thought of when he decided the time was right for something new. "The divorce was really traumatic. He wanted a new start," "He just thought, going out there, he might be able to get his life back together and make things go right again." So Owens...

For the fifth year in a row, a Bay Area philosophy professor has nominated condemned inmate Stanley Tookie Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing the Crips founder's postconviction writings and other efforts to keep youths from joining gangs. "He's a peacemaker because his message has connected with thousands upon thousands of people," said Philip Gasper, who chairs the philosophy and religion department at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont. "Mr. Williams' voice has a resonance and a credibility with children." If his conversion to anti-gang advocacy "is a ruse, it's a ruse that has had a wonderful effect,"...

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...

Tonight in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to have a closed meeting with those trying to get Stanley (Tookie) Williams clemency and those in law enforcement who want Williams to meet his end on Tuesday. Williams, who was sentenced to death after being found guilty of murdering four people in 1979, has the dubious honor of being one of the founders of the vicious street gang, the Crips. Still, Williams is being held up as an example of redemption because he has supposedly turned his life around. He has written children's books that speak out against gang violence. But...

This week Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will decide whether the convicted murderer and co-founder of the Crips gang, Stanley “Tookie” Williams, lives or dies. But that’s all that should be decided. Not whether Williams has been redeemed. Merely, will he be executed on December 13? I’m a death penalty abolitionist and therefore believe, deeply, that capital punishment is wrong; that it is barbaric, that it belittles all of us, whether or not its victims are innocent or guilty as charged. The celebrity campaign championing Williams, I suppose, is a tactical necessity to draw attention to his case. When Schwarzenegger holds the...

SAN FRANCISCO - A condemned US inmate who turned from a gang leader to an anti-gang advocate behind bars has been nominated for the 2006 Nobel peace prize, the college professor behind the nomination said. Professor Philip Gasper of Notre Dame de Namur University in California has nominated convicted killer Stanley "Tookie" Williams for the prize five years in a row, according to Alice Kim of the Campaign to Stop the Death Penalty. A Swiss parliamentarian was the first to recommend Williams for the prize, Kim said. "I respect him for his willingness to be public with his stand against...

Have you contacted Gov. Arnold's office about the clemency for Tookie Williams? Last week, I mailed a letter to his Sacramento office, urging him to deny clemency... The media is trying to create the impression that there is a big public support for granting clemency... Gov. Arnold should hear from citizens who want the execution to take place...

LOS ANGELES -- Saying he and convicted killer Stanley "Tookie" Williams can become "a powerful force for change," the national leader of the NAACP Tuesday asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant Williams clemency. Williams, the 51-year-old co-founder of the Crips gang, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1981 for the deaths of four people in two separate Southland robberies. He is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13. However, in a rally with local and state NAACP chapter members on the south lawn of City Hall, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President Bruce Gordon said he was...

Actor Jamie Foxx pleaded for a commuted sentence on behalf of Stanley Tookie Williams, the convicted murderer and Crips gang co-founder. Foxx is not alone. An unusually varied collection of Hollywood stars and other famous names is trying to persuade Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that Williams ought to be spared. His supporters assert that the people Williams killed were unimportant compared to his more recent artistic endeavors on death row. Williams has written nine children's books and established an online project linking teenagers in America and abroad. A Swiss legislator, college professors and others repeatedly have submitted his name for Nobel...

This just in from the "what-can-you-say?" department. The rhetoric being delivered by the moral reprobates trying to save from execution next week Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the California quadruple murderer and founder of the Crips street gang, is getting even more overheated, hysterical and irrational. In calling for clemency for the monster who should serve as a walking, talking billboard for capital punishment, Jamal Watkins, western regional director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, compared Williams to Moses. I'm not kidding. Moses! What do Williams and Moses have in common? According to Watkins, Moses, too, was "found...

What the jury saw was a musclebound hulk in a 4X jacket. What they heard about was barbaric: two cold-blooded robbery murders within 12 days, four dead and a suspect who was said to laugh hysterically as he mimicked the gurgling last breaths of one victim. Who they heard it from: an alleged accomplice granted immunity, a jailhouse informant, an acquaintance with a checkered criminal past, a friend who later claimed police beat him into testifying. A police expert tied a shell casing from one crime scene to a slide-action 12-gauge shotgun owned by Stanley "Tookie" Williams, but there were...

THE celebrity rush to save the life of convicted murderer and gang founder Tookie Williams may be the best argument yet for eliminating the death penalty. Dead, he's a martyr; alive and confined for life, he's just another nobody. I have no wish to further elevate Williams in the public eye, but the circus surrounding his Dec. 13 execution date forces reflection. First my bias and other disclaimers: I'm a relatively recent convert from the slow-gas-leak solution to death row crowding to a reluctant capital punishment opponent. I oppose the death penalty for one reason: The state makes mistakes, and...

Not only were his crimes atrocious, they were hate crimes, as commonly understood. In describing the shooting of the Asian motel owners, he called them "Buddhaheads". ---- From about.com: The People's case rested on strong physical evidence, eyewitnesses, and a series of incriminating admissions made by Williams himself. The following is a summary of some of the evidence in this case, as well as the witnesses that testified against Williams. It was this evidence that led the trial judge to deny the defense 18 motion to dismiss, to deny the defense motion for a new trial, to affirm the jury's...

2nd look at Bush service award White House panel unaware honoree was on Death Row Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff WriterSaturday, August 6, 2005A White House council on volunteerism said Friday it's taking another look at how the President's Call to Service Award -- accompanied by a laudatory letter from President Bush -- was issued to Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a California Death Row inmate who has written a series of books warning young people against the gang life. A spokesman for the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation said that neither the council nor Bush had any way of knowing...

The Hollywood guilty left is on the save Tookie band wagon. But let us remember who Stanley "Tookie" Williams actually is. Williams is the founder of the Crips. One of the most dangerous street gangs in America. They have "chapters" in every major and some medium sized cities in this country. And are responsible for hundreds of murders annually. Had this individual never have started this gang, these murders wouldn't have occurred. Next, he's been convicted of 3 counts of murder in the 1st degree: Warning graphic photos Victim #1 Albert Owens Victim #2 Tsai-Shai Yang Victim #3 Ye-Chin LinThis...