Schwarzenegger Denies Clemency for Tookie Williams

Stanley "Tookie" Williams has been on death row for 24 years. Although most Americans probably didn’t know much about him or his crimes for the first decade of his incarceration, his name has become part of the daily gossip around the water cooler for the last several months as his execution date drew nearer and nearer. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had until midnight Monday night to decide whether or not to spare Williams’ life, but he didn’t need that long. Early Monday afternoon Schwarzenegger finally put a period at the end of the sentence, and the gossip can move on to other pressing issues.

Williams is the co-founder of the violent Crips gang that has been responsible for hundreds of murders in Los Angeles since the early 1970s. Many of the killings have been committed during battles with rival gangs, most notably the Bloods, for turf and control of the drug trade. But the murders for which Williams was convicted were killings of innocent people during robberies. The first was Albert Owens, a 26-year old 7-Eleven clerk who was gunned down in Whittier, CA. Several weeks later, during a holdup at a family-owned motel in Los Angeles, Williams killed Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43. Despite claiming his innocence, Williams was convicted of the crimes in 1981 and sentenced to death. Williams, 51, is scheduled to die by lethal injection after midnight Monday night.

As the date of Williams execution has drawn near, his lawyers were joined by death penalty opponents, politicians, and even Hollywood stars in voicing their objections and putting forth reasons why he should be granted clemency. Some of the celebrities who joined in pleading for Williams were rapper Snoop Dogg, who was himself a member of the Crips gang; former "M*A*S*H" star Mike Farrell; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun played by Susan Sarandon in "Dead Man Walking;" and Jamie Foxx, who portrayed Williams in a made-for-cable movie about his life. They say that he has earned his redemption by possibly sparing a few lives, even though the gang he founded was responsible for hundreds of killings.

Clemency proponents claim that Williams had made amends for his crimes while serving his time in prison by writing a memoir and children’s books about the dangers of gangs. Amazingly, Williams has even been nominated for Nobel Prizes in peace and literature because of his supposedly redeeming activities while incarcerated. But prosecutors and advocates for the families of the people Williams killed argue that Williams does not deserve clemency from the governor because he refused to give authorities information about fellow gang members, and he never owned up to his own crimes. He doesn’t deserve clemency because he didn't grant any pardons to his victims or the countless thousands of victims slaughtered in gang violence that he helped to create.

In a last-ditch appeal, Williams’ lawyers claimed that his conviction came about through inaccurate forensics testing, and that he should have been allowed to argue that someone else killed one of the four victims. "If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked the court, "what meaning does clemency retain in this state?" The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, refused to intervene because there was no "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence."

Williams will be the 12th condemned inmate in California to be executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Rev. Jesse Jackson led a group of about 30 death penalty protesters in a march across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn Monday to the gates of San Quentin. The California Highway Patrol is planning to tighten security outside the prison, where hundreds of protesters are expected to gather during the evening hours. Surprisingly, Williams himself doesn’t seem too concerned about the clock ticking down after 24 years. In a recent interview, he said, "Me fearing what I’m facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me? If it’s my time to be executed, what’s all the ranting and raving going to do?"