Dead reckoning

Emerging from the courtroom of LA Superior Court Judge William Pounders, who had just set Dec. 13 for the execution of convicted murderer, former gang member and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stanley “Tookie” Williams, actor Mike Farrell could barely contain his emotions.

Dejected, frustrated and somewhat angry, the veteran television star and longtime anti-death penalty activist appeared to be on the verge of tears while making his way along the ninth floor hallway following the hearing inside the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles.

“The judge essentially pulled a Pontius Pilate and stuck his thumb out, down. It’s a very antiseptic process,” Farrell said haltingly as he made his way to the elevators along with lawyers and other supporters of Williams who also were in court for Monday morning’s hearing.

“One of the rabbis said, ‘A life can be dismissed in so casual and so ministerial a way.’ It’s just pathetic,” said Farrell, board president of the activist group Death Penalty Focus.

He and other anti-death penalty activists, many of whom gathered outside the courtroom following the hearing, find Williams’ case begging of clemency.

Among the nearly 650 condemned inmates in California, the 51-year-old Williams stands out as having turned his life around, and was even given a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for his writing and activism from behind bars.

Though he admits helping form the deadly Crips street gang at 16, Williams maintains his innocence of involvement in four gruesome 1979 robbery-murders.

In 1981, he was sentenced to die for the execution-style murder of a Whittier convenience store clerk Albert Owens and a particularly horrific triple murder of two LA motel owners and their daughter with a shotgun.

In April 1997, after receiving 12 disciplinary violations in prison, Williams wrote a letter from his cell to apologize for helping start the Crips.

“I also didn’t expect the Crips to end up ruining the lives of so many young people, especially black young men who have hurt other black young men,” he wrote. “I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions.”

A year before that apology, Williams began publishing a series of children’s books decrying gangs and has spoken to at-risk and incarcerated children from his cell. Last year, his Tookie Protocol for Peace was credited with forging a truce between rival gangs in New Jersey following the premiere of “Redemption,” a television drama about his life starring actor Jamie Foxx.

Since his change of heart, “Stan has saved lives. To save Tookie Williams’ life for the future will save the lives of other people who have strayed into gang violence,” said Stephen Rohde, a past president of the Southern California ACLU and member of the legal team seeking clemency for Williams.

‘Misdeeds and injustices’

As activists and attorneys struggle to save Williams, Los Angeles Democratic state Assemblyman Paul Koretz is joining that fight and has already written a bill calling for a temporary moratorium on executions.

“More good is done by keeping him alive,” said Koretz of Williams. “Certainly we’ll do whatever we can to encourage the governor to prevent this execution from taking place.”

Koretz’s bill would stop all executions through at least 2007, pending the outcome of a study of use of the death penalty by the state Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.

The product of a 2004 Senate resolution led by then-Democratic state Sen. John Burton, the commission is expected to recommend significant reforms in the application of capital punishment. Its membership includes LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, Attorney General Bill Lockyer, LA Human Relations Commissioner Rabbi Allen Freehling, LA County Public Defender Michael Judge and nine others.

These efforts can’t help Williams, however. Koretz’s bill won’t be voted on until next year, leaving a good possibly Williams will be executed before the state could halt executions while it investigates the fairness of the death penalty.
For those close to the Williams case, to execute a man dedicated to ending urban youth violence would undermine the purpose and intent of the state’s criminal justice system and be a shameful act in the eyes of the world.

“If America gets sanctioned for its misdeeds and injustices, I would not be surprised,” said Leanette Hill, who along with Farrell and some of the condemned man’s friends braved morning showers to attend the hearing and a press conference on the steps of the courthouse, sponsored by the ecumenical group California People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.

Farrell, Hill and dozens of others were joined by top area clergy members of all faiths, among them Rabbi Leonard Beerman; the Rev. James Lawson, a onetime confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. and pastor emeritus at LA’s Holman United Methodist Church; and the Rev. Paul Sawyer, a longtime death penalty opponent, of the Throop Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena.

“I would not be surprised if the whole world turned against America and started sanctioning her for her perversion of justices,” said Hill.

Hill said she was also disgusted by Pounders’ refusal to extend the execution date to Dec. 22.

“The judge could have extended it eight more days, and wouldn’t do it. It’s really a reprehensible perversion of justice that we have seen in his case. A lot of the evidence that could have come out that would acquit him hasn’t even been examined,” said Hill, pointing out Williams is certainly not alone as a poor black man unable to afford adequate legal representation.

But, she said, “That’s what’s happening with Tookie. … Everyone knows that our justice system is a perverted one … even though [America] claims to have a Constitution, [the criminal justice system] is more political than anything.”

Running out of time

Awaiting execution for more than two decades, Williams’ only hope to survive the year now rests with a clemency petition to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

On Oct. 11, the US Supreme Court rejected appeals on his case based on alleged racism used in court arguments against him. He was convicted in 1979 by an all-white jury, and has had numerous appeals turned down.

Outside the courthouse, attorney Peter Fleming, who represented Williams at Monday’s hearing, said he is presently preparing a plea for clemency for Schwarzenegger to consider. Fleming said that the petition will be sent to the governor on Nov. 8, the same day as the special election called by Schwarzenegger for four of eight measures to appear on the ballot.

“Stanley Williams is not about the death penalty. Stanley Williams’ case is about a man who has done what is the most important thing a man can do in this country, and that is reach out to the youth of this country with books, with tapes … to have young people understand that no matter how difficult things might be, there is always opportunity,” Fleming said to the crowd.

“Williams fills every requirement for clemency. If the governor is going to take seriously his authority over life and death, then Williams qualifies to be saved,” said Rohde.

Political winds blowing as they are, though, it’s unknown whether Schwarzenegger, whose office had no comment for this story, will consider keeping Williams alive.

Since becoming governor, Schwarzenegger has rejected clemency requests from two Death Row inmates scheduled for execution.

Donald Beardslee, convicted of killing two women in drug-related murders, was executed by lethal injection in January.
Also a convicted murderer, Kevin Cooper won a last-minute reprieve from the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals based on calls to test physical evidence his attorney’s believe was mishandled by investigators. While San Diego US District Judge Marilyn Huff upheld Cooper’s sentence for literally slicing a San Bernardino County family to death with an ax, a Court of Appeals panel again agreed to review his case, possibly as soon as next month.

‘Absolute travesty’

After the press conference, Fleming said he has received thousands of emails from youngsters whom Williams has reached and has perhaps even saved through his work. Fleming reiterated his belief that the case of Williams “is about one man.”

“Like I said, kids are an important part of this country, and no one has done what he has done to reach these kids,” Fleming said.

Barbara Becnel, who interviewed Williams for a 1993 Essence magazine article on urban violence and later co-wrote his series of children’s books, said she believes Williams has touched the lives of an incalculable number of children.

“The person I’ve known for almost 13 years is a very intelligent, honorable person. The work he is doing is really selfless. He’s in a dangerous place to come out against gangs,” said Becnel. “It would be an absolute travesty for the state to execute Williams.”

Rev. Lawson called the state’s decision to execute Williams tantamount to first-degree murder.

“It is very important that all of us recognize, as human beings, we do have a responsibility to be accountable to the creator of all of us,” Lawson, 77, said before launching into harsh criticisms of Pounders and his ruling.

Before finishing, he called on conservative Christian leaders to join in the fight to end capital punishment and lend their voices to saving Williams, which they have not done.

The ruling by Pounders, Lawson said, “was done without any kind of sensibility of what it is to be human and to be alive. It was done with the spirit of tyranny. There was no sense of tragedy of human beings calling for the death of other human beings. No sense that killing another human being is in contradiction to our own historical document, the one especially that says we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator, with these being the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

‘The demon of error’

Koretz’s moratorium bill, Assembly Bill 1120, formed out of his own questions about the fairness of the American justice system. According to the state Senate’s charge for the state Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, more than 100 Americans sentenced to die have been exonerated “I’ve always had mixed feelings about the death penalty,” said Koretz. “The thing that really made me queasy was that, every once in a while, someone is found to be innocent after they have been convicted and executed.”

Such was almost the case with Darby Tillis in Illinois, convicted to die for murders he did not commit until he was granted a pardon by former Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan.

Ryan made headlines in 2003 when he issued a blanket commutation of the sentences of all 167 of the state’s Death Row inmates, decrying that state’s justice system as “haunted by the demon of error” and plagued by class and race injustice.

“God used Gov. Ryan to wipe the bloodstains off the halls of Death Row. I have all the respect in the world for that man,” said Tillis, who was convicted of murder in 1979 and is now 62.

Tillis is part of Voices from Death Row, an anti-death penalty speaking tour that will stop Saturday in at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park.

“Death Row is horrible. It smells like death. It feels like death. It is death,” he said. “The death penalty itself is hate and revenge, and the people are bloodthirsty.”

And it was because of what Ryan did, said Koretz, that he wrote his bill to stay state executions.

“I thought what Gov. Ryan did was absolutely brilliant,” said Koretz. “If a fairly conservative governor could take such a courageous step, I thought a more moderate governor in California can do the same [by signing the bill].
But what about other Democrats?

Assembly Majority Leader Dario Frommer, a Glendale Democrat, and Pasadena Democratic Assemblywoman Carol Liu did not comment on whether they support Koretz’s moratorium idea.

Pasadena Democratic state Sen. Jack Scott hasn’t taken a position on the Williams case, but said he would consider supporting Koretz’s bill.

“I would consider supporting a moratorium on the death penalty to avoid the execution of innocent people. I think we need to study issues such as fair jury selection, the use of advanced technology — like DNA testing and how it is applied, and whether or not the death penalty is really a deterrent to crime,” said Scott in an email statement to the Weekly.

System of terror

Back at the press conference, Lawson reminded his listeners that “[Schwarzenegger] has the power of life and death. The Scriptures tell us when you have the power of life and death, you must choose life. The Old Testament is still true: Thou shall not kill. And we in the United States have become lovers of killing, whether in Iraq or on the streets of Los Angeles. It’s time now for many good, blessed people of this community, of this state, to rise up and say our time under God is now, and we reject every call to kill. … Killing Stanley Williams is first-degree murder. It is intentional murder.”

John “Big J” Watson, who attended the press conference and the hearing, said he spent time in prison with Williams, who told him he was high on drugs at the time of his arrest. Watkins is convinced Williams was railroaded by authorities.

“The trial was unfair from the beginning,” said Watson. “He doesn’t know what happened.”

Zane Smith, one of the founders of the Compton Crips and the man who first recruited Williams into the gang, said the case “is so unfair because I know personally he was on PCP” at the time of his arrest.

Rev. Sawyer said Williams is important, but no more important than other people scheduled to die by lethal injection at the hands of the state as part of what he called a “monstrous system.”

The death penalty, Sawyer said, “is the hammer blow to enforce a repressive system. If you can threaten people with death, holding that over somebody’s head in the system makes everyone afraid. So it’s terror. It’s terrorism.”

The Rev. Ignacio Castuera of St. John’s United Methodist Church in LA said Williams’ case “is particularly poignant because it is a perfect demonstration of how the system is not working for a great majority of the people. Bad education, to begin with, incarceration, execution, that’s typical of the lives of so many of our people, young men, especially some of  the brilliant ones, and [Williams] has shown he is a brilliant man, and quite redeemable.

“I think we need to reconstitute the fact that human beings are redeemable. We need to really be thinking about the whole system and how it needs to be reshaped,” Castuera said.

Patty Carmody, a volunteer with the Catholic Church who was joined at the rally by Megan Fincher, said killing Williams would hurt the children he’s reached more than anyone.

“If we were to kill him that would be telling kids that what he said doesn’t really count,” Carmody said.

It’s all on Arnie

During his time at the microphone, Farrell repeated his call for a moratorium on capital punishment and promised to broach the subject when he next meets personally with Schwarzenegger.

“What we need to do is take a look at our system and while we do that we need to stop executing anybody, much less going forward with executing of Stanley Williams,” Farrell said.

When he speaks with Schwar-zenegger, Farrell said he will ask the governor “to be a leader, to be a man, to be a human being, to stop this execution and call for a moratorium on all executions while we examine our system and find out what is wrong and fix what is wrong.”

In the meantime, “I think it’s a horrible possibility that this execution will be done in the name of the people of California — it’s the People v. Williams,” said Rohde. “Decent people are repulsed by the deliberate, calculated taking of lives. Killing to prove that killing is wrong is, in itself, wrong.”