Do Killers Dream of Electric Chair Sheep?
As we near the execution date of Crips co-founder Stan "Tookie" Williams, a slew of Hollywood celebrities have been urging Governor Schwarzenegger to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The latest actor to speak out against the execution is Academy Award-winner Jamie Foxx, who played Williams in a made-for-TV movie. As we all know, actors are the definitive authority on subjects they've addressed on-screen. That's why Martin Sheen thinks the viewing public actually wants to hear about his political views; after all, he was the President, right?
Foxx weighs in: "If Stan Tookie Williams had been born in Connecticut in the same type of situation, and was a white man, he would have been running a company." It's unclear exactly what kind of company, or what business school Williams would have opted for. I'm going to go out on a limb here, & say he would've been a Yale man.
Anyways, Stan Williams & a high-school buddy (killed long ago), co-founded the biggest street gang in the world. In 1979 he was convicted of two capital crimes: killing a convenience-store clerk during an armed robbery, then executing a couple who owned a motel, along with their daughter. That's Yale for you! To this day, Williams maintains his innocence. Here are the three main points, listed on his website, that sum up what he poignantly calls his "innocence issues":
1) There were other, unidentified fingerprints found at the scene of both murders. His fingerprints were nowhere to be found.
2) A bloody bootprint was found at one of the crime scenes, which was determined not to be made by Williams.
3) His jailhouse confession was in fact submitted by another convict, a "white man" who was given access to intimate details of the case & was granted leniency for his efforts.
In summary: he didn't leave fingerprints, someone else stepped in the blood of his victims after he fled the scene, & the testimony of a jailhouse snitch sealed the case against him. Aw, poor Tookie.
What's interesting is that his website also bemoans the fact that the prosecutor in the case used out-&-out racist tactics to convict him. Such as? Williams, as a prominent figure in the South Central Los Angeles underworld, was likened to a Bengal Tiger in the San Diego Zoo. Er...that sounds more like a metaphor than a racial slur, but then I've never been to law school. The other complaint from the Tookie camp is that the prosecutor was able to dismiss the three African American prospective jurors, leaving a lily-white jury that was all to happy to convict the poor gangsta. Tough break, landing a prosecutor that actually knew what he was doing.
Just for shits & giggles, I thought I'd show you, my loyal audience, a brief excerpt from Tookie's petition for clemency, as addressed to the Honorable Governor...
"This petition is, in a way, about what America is and what it offers to its people--the right to strive, to seek and find purpose, to have hope, to put failure & wrongdoing behind... the knowledge that America is a nation which is built on these values, and believe in second chances." God bless that poor mass-murderer...he brought hope back to a despondent nation, when we needed it the most!
Something I thought was strange was the notable absence of any mention of his victims. In fact, his main concern seems to be stopping "youth-on-youth & black-on-black violence", & he's particularly disturbed by news that sets of Crips have sprouted in South Africa. Then, as I read more of his petition, I found:
"This message is not about the death penalty, or about reversing the judgement of the courts. Nor does it diminish the death of Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Thsai-Shai Yang, Yee-Chen Lin, or the suffering of the family members and friends who loved them." Gee thanks. Well I'm sure their families have gotten over it by now, the important thing is that Tookie keeps churning out children's books, right? We don't want his Nobel Peace Prize nomination to be jeopardized by lethal injection, do we? What kind of message would that send?
Well, it's in the hands of the Governator now. He'll be meeting with attorneys, then deciding whether or not to spare poor old Tookie. Will he be swayed the Hollywood elite he once rubbed muscular elbows with? Or will his conservative backers put enough pressure on him to keep Williams on Death Row? We'll know soon enough. The execution date is set for December 13th. When asked for comment on the clemency hearing, Schwarzenegger replied, "It's never a fun thing to do." Less fun than having your family murdered by a career-criminal, I would imagine.
Foxx weighs in: "If Stan Tookie Williams had been born in Connecticut in the same type of situation, and was a white man, he would have been running a company." It's unclear exactly what kind of company, or what business school Williams would have opted for. I'm going to go out on a limb here, & say he would've been a Yale man.
Anyways, Stan Williams & a high-school buddy (killed long ago), co-founded the biggest street gang in the world. In 1979 he was convicted of two capital crimes: killing a convenience-store clerk during an armed robbery, then executing a couple who owned a motel, along with their daughter. That's Yale for you! To this day, Williams maintains his innocence. Here are the three main points, listed on his website, that sum up what he poignantly calls his "innocence issues":
1) There were other, unidentified fingerprints found at the scene of both murders. His fingerprints were nowhere to be found.
2) A bloody bootprint was found at one of the crime scenes, which was determined not to be made by Williams.
3) His jailhouse confession was in fact submitted by another convict, a "white man" who was given access to intimate details of the case & was granted leniency for his efforts.
In summary: he didn't leave fingerprints, someone else stepped in the blood of his victims after he fled the scene, & the testimony of a jailhouse snitch sealed the case against him. Aw, poor Tookie.
What's interesting is that his website also bemoans the fact that the prosecutor in the case used out-&-out racist tactics to convict him. Such as? Williams, as a prominent figure in the South Central Los Angeles underworld, was likened to a Bengal Tiger in the San Diego Zoo. Er...that sounds more like a metaphor than a racial slur, but then I've never been to law school. The other complaint from the Tookie camp is that the prosecutor was able to dismiss the three African American prospective jurors, leaving a lily-white jury that was all to happy to convict the poor gangsta. Tough break, landing a prosecutor that actually knew what he was doing.
Just for shits & giggles, I thought I'd show you, my loyal audience, a brief excerpt from Tookie's petition for clemency, as addressed to the Honorable Governor...
"This petition is, in a way, about what America is and what it offers to its people--the right to strive, to seek and find purpose, to have hope, to put failure & wrongdoing behind... the knowledge that America is a nation which is built on these values, and believe in second chances." God bless that poor mass-murderer...he brought hope back to a despondent nation, when we needed it the most!
Something I thought was strange was the notable absence of any mention of his victims. In fact, his main concern seems to be stopping "youth-on-youth & black-on-black violence", & he's particularly disturbed by news that sets of Crips have sprouted in South Africa. Then, as I read more of his petition, I found:
"This message is not about the death penalty, or about reversing the judgement of the courts. Nor does it diminish the death of Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Thsai-Shai Yang, Yee-Chen Lin, or the suffering of the family members and friends who loved them." Gee thanks. Well I'm sure their families have gotten over it by now, the important thing is that Tookie keeps churning out children's books, right? We don't want his Nobel Peace Prize nomination to be jeopardized by lethal injection, do we? What kind of message would that send?
Well, it's in the hands of the Governator now. He'll be meeting with attorneys, then deciding whether or not to spare poor old Tookie. Will he be swayed the Hollywood elite he once rubbed muscular elbows with? Or will his conservative backers put enough pressure on him to keep Williams on Death Row? We'll know soon enough. The execution date is set for December 13th. When asked for comment on the clemency hearing, Schwarzenegger replied, "It's never a fun thing to do." Less fun than having your family murdered by a career-criminal, I would imagine.
posted by I. P. Frehley at 12:03 PM
1 Comments:
do you think the Bloods are going to have a big party if/when Tookie is executed? If Tookie is executed, it will certainly be a moral blow for the Crips, whose founders now only consist of Leon 'Knucklehead' Washington, now a prominent criminal prosecuter, and Irving 'Sharkie' Horowitz, the original defense attorney for the Crips.
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