Tookie Williams Deserves Clemency

On December 8, 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will meet privately with all involved and decide whether to grant clemency to Stan “Tookie” Williams, a stay that was first recommended by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on September 10, 2002. When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused his next appeal on February 2, 2005, Judge Johnnie Rawlinson wrote on behalf of the nine dissenting judges, “If our judicial system is to inspire a sense of confidence among the populace, we must not, we cannot permit trials to proceed in the face of blatant, race-based jury selection practices.” Williams’ life was placed in the governor’s hands by the California Supreme Court when it refused on November 30, 2005, in a 4-2 decision without comment, to halt his execution by lethal injection that is scheduled for December 13, 2005. Chief Justice Ronald George voted to reopen the case, an appeal rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on October 11, 2005, “to investigate the racism and discrimination at the heart of his case, as well as Tookie’s innocence issues.”

The FOX movie Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story and the books co-authoured by Williams and Barbara Cottman Becnel are remarkably potent reflections on gang activity that even by conservative estimates have “saved hundreds of lives.” His autobiography Blue Rage, Black Redemption could do the same. In August, Tookie “received an award for his good deeds, complete with a letter from President Bush praising him for demonstrating ‘the outstanding character of America.'” But this case must be reviewed for reasons other than the immediate and forseeable contributions to society made by Williams. Not only has the original prosecutor twice been censured by the California Supreme Court for the same discriminatory tactics he used in Williams’ case, the evidence is tainted and highly suspect.

From the Fact Sheet (pdf) at SaveTookie.org.

There was physical evidence, but none of it pointed to Stan.

• Fingerprints were found at both crime scenes, but they were not Stan’s. These fingerprints have never been identified.

• A bloody boot print left near the victim at one of the crime scenes was not Stan’s. This boot print has never been identified.

• A shotgun shell found at that crime scene was said to be from a gun purchased by Stan five years earlier. But the gun was, in fact, found under the bed of two people – a husband and wife facing felony insurance fraud charges and who were also under investigation for murdering their own crime partner. This husband-and-wife crime team did not serve any prison time and their murder investigation was dropped after they testified that Stan “volunteered” a confession to them.

• The “star” witness at Stan’s trial – a white man and longtime felon who was placed in a nearby cell while Stan awaited trial and was years later discovered to have been a paid police informant – also testified that Stan “volunteered” a confession to him. But nearly 20 years after Stan’s trial it was discovered that a Los Angeles police officer had left a copy of the police murder file involving Stan’s case in this informant’s cell for overnight study. The next day the murder file was picked up by that same officer, and the informant informed the police that Stan had volunteered a confession to him. In return for this testimony, the informant – who himself was facing the death penalty for rape, murder and mutilation – was given a lesser sentence that allowed him the possibility of parole and freedom.

California Prepares to Execute Tookie Williams – Countdown to a Legal Lynching
by Phil Gasper, Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California

None of the physical evidence found at the two crime scenes, including fingerprints and a boot print, matched Stan. A witnesses description of a person seen leaving the scene of one of the crimes did not fit him either. A shotgun shell supposedly matched a weapon he had bought several years earlier, but that gun was in the possession of a couple that was also facing serious felony charges. After they claimed that Stan had confessed to them, however, the investigation against them was dropped.

To get the charges to stick, the prosecutor in the case, Robert Martin, used blatant racism. The trial was moved from Los Angeles to Torrance, a predominantly white, highly conservative area. All the African-Americans in the jury pool were dismissed and Stan’s case was heard by an all-white jury.

In his closing argument, Martin compared Stan in the courtroom to a Bengal tiger in the zoo, and said that “in his environment” (i.e. South Central LA) he would behave like the tiger in its “habitat.”

Excerpt from About Stan Tookie Williams:

Indeed, a member of the California Supreme Court at that time made the following statement about that prosecutor:

…I believe that we must place the ultimate blame on its real source – the prosecutor. It was he who unconstitutionally struck Black prospective jurors. The record compels this conclusion and permits none other… This prosecutor knew that such conduct was altogether improper. The trial court told him as much. And so did we… This court attempted to teach this same prosecutor that invidious discrimination was unacceptable when we reversed a judgment of death because of similar improper conduct on his part. He failed – or refused – to learn his lesson. The result is another reversal – and another costly burden on the administration of justice.

And Williams was afforded inadequate representation during the appeal process:

AMY GOODMAN: Stanley Williams, what does it mean to have the level of support that you have right now?

STANLEY TOOKIE WILLIAMS: It’s God-inspiring to me, awe-inspiring. It’s excellent. I’m exceptionally grateful. I never expected it. The majority of my life, I have fought, especially in here, alone. Even – I even had to fight against the attorneys, the incompetent attorneys, appeal attorneys, appellate attorneys, rather, that I had representing me, who were not qualified. I had one attorney who was an employment litigator, job litigator, you know, on the federal level, and she had been on that for like three years, and this woman was coming to represent me for four murders?

Then they had a guy that represented me. He only represented me for six months, because after that, he had to end up leaving and going to Ireland somewhere. Now, he knew prior to that that he had an engagement, but yet he took the case, allowing me to think that he was going to be permanent. He said he was going to be permanent. But yet, still, he left within six months. As a matter of fact, it was five-and-a-half months in which he left.

So, these are the things – these are the type of representations that I was getting, attorneys who would file a brief, a 27-page or 45-page brief with over 120 typos in it, and telling me that, ‘Oh, well, you know, the judge wouldn’t – it doesn’t matter. They won’t look at that.’ Of course, they’ll look at that. And they’ll use that against me, not her, me.

Governor Schwarzenegger, a supporter of the death penalty, should take a stand in defence of the work begun by former Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republican “who voted to reinstate the death penalty in his state in 1977.” Although he was criticised and derided for imposing “a moratorium on executions in Illinois three years ago after he learned that 13 death row residents had been unfairly convicted” the study he commissioned confirmed the worst. “Even in capital cases, where a defendant’s life is on the line, the study found that there were too many instances where defense attorneys were incompetent, the police acted inappropriately, prosecutors acted overzealously, judges acted unfairly, juries judged too harshly or appellate standards didn’t serve as safety nets.”

Williams isn’t going anywhere. What purpose is served by rushing him to a death that is not above suspicion?