California governor denies clemency to Tookie Williams
LOS ANGELES - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday denied clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams, one of the early leaders of the Crips street gang, and the 51-year-old convicted murderer was scheduled to die by lethal injection early Tuesday.
Schwarzenegger pondered Williams' appeal for clemency over the weekend and issued his decision just over 12 hours before the scheduled execution at one minute after midnight.
The governor said he could not accept Williams' argument that he had redeemed himself through the work he has done in prison to try to keep young people from joining gangs. Williams had spent nearly a quarter of a century in appeals and legal maneuvers to reverse his convictions for four murders in 1979.
"Now, his appeals exhausted, Williams seeks mercy in the form of a petition for clemency," Schwarzenegger wrote. "He claims that he deserves clemency because he has undergone a personal transformation and is redeemed."
The governor, who has twice before denied Death Row inmates clemency, said that the exhaustive appeals process and other legal wrangling had failed to persuade any judge to reverse Williams' convictions.
After the decision was announced, one of Williams' lawyers expressed anger.
"If Stanley Williams does not deserve clemency," said attorney Peter Fleming Jr., "what meaning does clemency have in this state?"
In recent weeks a raft of celebrities joined in the campaign to gain clemency for Williams. Actor Jamie Foxx and rapper Snoop Dogg were among those joining the Rev. Jessie Jackson and other religious leaders at rallies urging the governor to spare Williams' life and to commute his sentence to life without the possibility of parole.
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and former California state Sen. Tom Hayden were among the politicians supporting clemency, along with religious leaders such as Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
Schwarzenegger's office received petitions signed by more than 50,000 people asking the governor to spare Williams' life.
The chief argument of Williams' supporters was that he had turned his life around during his years in jail and was now a force for good. Those supporting clemency noted Williams' numerous books and articles aimed at young people in which he told them not to do the things he had done and to reject gangs.
But Schwarzenegger noted that Williams had never expressed remorse for the four murder victims. Williams has steadfastly maintained his innocence.
Williams was to be the 12th person in California to be executed since the state restored the death penalty in 1977 after a brief suspension. The last governor to grant clemency to a Death Row inmate was Ronald Reagan in 1967; he spared the life of a convicted murderer who was mentally infirm.
The California Supreme Court refused to reopen Williams' case on two separate appeals, first in a routine appeal right after he was convicted and then again Sunday. On Monday the 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in San Francisco also rejected an appeal.
Williams was convicted in 1981 of the murders of four people - Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang, and Yee-Chen Lin - in two separate attacks in the Los Angeles area in February and March of 1979.
Jody Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said the governor's decision was largely a political one.
"It would have been an act of great political will to grant clemency," he said.
Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who in 2003 commuted the death sentences of all inmates on the state's Death Row, expressed disappointment Monday in Schwarzenegger's decision.
Speaking outside the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago where he is on trial for corruption, Ryan called Williams "the textbook case for redemption."
He said Schwarzenegger "will probably have some regrets maybe later on as he gets a little bit older and gets gray like me."
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Monday, December 12th 2005 at 9:30PM
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