1,689
online users
thotties       tv/movies       gaming       gear       tech       guap       rides       eats       health       bxwf       misc

Dec 12 - No clemency: Ex-Crips' leader to be executed



more
ADVERTISEMENT
 
topics gone triple plat - Number 1 spot 3X PLAT



section  1   0 bx goons and 1 bystanders Share this on Twitter       Share this on Facebook
 

section news
  

 18 years ago '04        #1
9774 page views
0 comments


KiNgJaMeS305 
avatar
Props total: 120 120  Slaps total: 15 15
Dec 12 - No clemency: Ex-Crips' leader to be executed
 

 
No clemency: Ex-Crips' leader to be executed
California Gov. Schwarzenegger rejects Stanley Tookie Williams' request

Updated: 3:37 p.m. ET Dec. 12, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied clemency for Crips co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams, who is scheduled to die early Tuesday.

The request to the governor was Williams’ last hope for being spared of execution, which is set to happen Tuesday morning at 12:01 a.m.

Schwarzenegger’s decision comes after a federal appeals court refused to block the execution early Tuesday.
Story continues below ↓ advertisement
Click Here!

Williams, 51, is set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.

Hollywood stars and death penalty opponents mounted a campaign to save his life, making him one of the nation’s biggest death-row cause celebres in decades. His supporters argued that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had made amends during more than two decades in prison by writing a memoir and children’s books about the dangers of gangs.

Prosecutors and victims’ advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.

Williams is set to become the 12th California condemned inmate executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a brief hiatus.

Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down a clerk in a convenience store holdup and a mother, father and daughter in a motel robbery weeks later. Williams claimed he was innocent.

The last time a California governor granted clemency was in 1967, when Ronald Reagan spared a mentally infirm ki1ler. Schwarzenegger — a Republican who has come under fire from members of his own party as too accommodating to liberals — rejected clemency twice before during his two years in office.

Less than 12 hours before the execution was set to take place, the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals said it would not intervene because, among other things, there was no “clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence.”

In his last-ditch appeal, Williams claimed that he should have been allowed to argue at his trial that someone else ki1led one of the four victims, and that shoddy forensics connected him to the other ki1lings.

Williams was convicted of ki1ling Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at a Los Angeles motel the family owned, and Albert Owens, 26, a 7-Eleven clerk gunned down in Whittier.

Celebrities fight for Williams
Among the celebrities who took up Williams’ cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in “Dead Man Walking”; Bianca Jagger; and former “M.A.S.H” star Mike Farrell. During Williams’ 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.

“If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency,” defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked, “what meaning does clemency retain in this state?”

The impending execution resulted in feverish preparations over the weekend by those on both sides of the debate, with the California Highway Patrol planning to tighten security outside the prison, where hundreds of protesters were expected.

A group of about three dozen death penalty protesters were joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson as they marched across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn Monday en route to the gates of San Quentin, where they were expected to rally with hundreds of people.

At least publicly, the person apparently least occupied with his fate seemed to be Williams himself.

“Me fearing what I’m facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me?” Williams said in a recent interview. “If it’s my time to be executed, what’s all the ranting and raving going to do?”

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10355657/



icon
best
icon
worst
0 comments

say something...

ADVERTISEMENT
Sign me up
 
 

yesterday...


most viewed right now
props-277
Image(s) inside The difference between a 30 year old in the 80s vs 2024
35 comments
2 days ago
@wild'ish
most viewed right now
7
logo LeBron gets called out for stat padding
99 comments
1 day ago
@sports
most viewed right now
props+824
Image(s) inside Damn she living like that
125 comments
2 days ago
@wild'ish
most viewed right now
2
Video inside What happened to 1994 atl cold case murdered pulled over in traffic
9 comments
1 day ago
@hiphop
back to top