by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright December 13, 2005
All Rights Reserved.

ejecting Stanley Tookie Williams' plea for clemency, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned thumbs down on the 51-year-old co-founder of the Crips street gang, allowing his scheduled execution to proceed. Last minute glitches with technicians struggling to insert the intravenous needle caused gasps from San Quentin's death chamber, where onlookers witnessed the best technology could offer, watching blood gush from Williams' arm from multiple needle pricks. After unthinkable fumbling, Williams finally succumbed to the lethal transfusion of sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and sodium chloride. While Tookie drifted into eternity, eyewitnesses were treated to a case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Arnold took nearly five days to decide Willams' fate, before denying his clemency request only hours before the scheduled execution at 12:01 AM, Tuesday, December 13.

      Tookie was convicted of the Feb. 28, 1979 brutal execution style shotgun murder of 26-year-old Pico Rivera 7-Eleven convenience store clerk Albert Owens, and, on March 11, the murders of Brookhaven Motel owners, Taiwanese immigrants Yen-I Yang, his wife Tsai-Shai Chen and their daughter Yu Chin Yan Lin. While jailhouse informants and ballistic evidence implicated Williams, there was no disinterested eyewitness or forensic evidence linking Tookie to the crimes. One of Tookie's accomplices, Alfred Coward, testified that Tookie murdered Owens and the Taiwanese family. Williams denied his guilt all the way to San Quentin's death chamber, refusing to admit to killings he said he didn't commit. For months, Tookie had the opportunity to confess, giving him his best shot at clemency. If he were truly psychopathic, he would have followed a PR script and recanted.

      Arnold scheduled clemency hearings for Tookie's attorneys and the Los Angeles District Atty. on Thursday, December 8. While the governor heard from both sides, his mind was made up before the hearings. There was nothing presented that wasn't known to Arnold before meeting. Yet he took five days to allow his legal staff to draft a five-page letter blasting Tookie's sincerity and reasons for denying clemency. Tookie asked for clemency based on “personal redemption Stanley Williams has experienced and the positive impact of the message sends,” referring to his eight anti-gang books and five-nominations for Nobel Prizes. Arnold dismissed Tookie's redemption as “jailhouse conversion,” done to get him off the hook. “Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption,” said Schwarzenegger, emphatically rejecting Tookie's plea.

      Letting Tookie squirm for five-days before his execution showed colossal insensitivity to a death row inmate's final request. Refusing to rule until hours before his death exacerbated the agony anticipating his own death. “There was nothing in the tone of the governor's decision that suggests it was a close call or agonized over,” said USC Law Professor Judy Armour, befuddled by Arnold's delayed response. Why go through all the hoopla when the outcome was predetermined. Expecting a convicted killer to confess when he's consistently maintained his innocence seems unrealistic. “I will never admit capital crimes that I did not commit—not even to save my life,” said Williams in his 2003 autobiography “Blue Rage, Black Redemption,” telling Rev. Jesse Jackson the exact same thing hours before his death. If he really committed the murders and wanted clemency, why wouldn't he confess?

      Tookie's case just doesn't add up. He was convicted based on the testimony not of truly independent eyewitnesses but of accomplices and jailhouse informants subject to plea-bargaining. It's unlikely that the leader of the Crips would engage in senseless killings in the course of performing a petty armed robbery. He could have ordered any number of underlings to perform the heinous acts. “Tookie wanted to have it both ways—he wanted to maintain his actual innocence claim so that he would have something to argue in the courts, but he still wanted to claim that he had been redeemed,” said Loyola University Law School professor Laurie Levenson, ignoring that Tookie could have entered a false confession to win clemency. It's brazen to expect Williams to confess to a murder he never committed, even if it meant increasing his chances of clemency.

      Stating emphatically that Williams hadn't atoned, Arnold tipped his hand into there real reasons behind the five-day delay. Since he knew Tookie didn't meet his grounds for clemency, Schwarzenegger's handlers agonized about political repercussions, eventually concluding he couldn't risk further alienating his base heading into next year's reelection. Hiring former Gov. Gray Davis' chief of staff, Democratic operative Susan Kennedy may have already turned off enough supporters to doom his reelection. It doesn't help having approval ratings under 40%. Arnold's team didn't expect Tookie's clemency to create the media feeding frenzy, raising the old maelstrom about the death penalty. Weighing where he wins more votes, the choice to let Tookie fry was obvious. Blasting a condemned man's last request for life showed, once again, why Arnold's political career is in trouble.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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