^^^ i was thinking the same thing. if they execute him after all this hype and attention, you are asking for a riot. which is sad cause thats the only way some black people know how to express their disappointments.

I know there was a rumor that crips in jail were planning on acting the fool if he was executed, but that's just a rumor of course.

Wasn't Tookie nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?

Five times and counting... As for the crips in jail, I am sure San Quentin has already approved the overtime. Plus they probably have a swat team on standby.

i watched the bet special.....
 

i saw the interview with williams last night. there are serious problems with the evidence that got him put away. after watching the show, i couldnt help but wonder if williams is on death row for his role as a crip founder or as the person responsible for killing those people back in '79?

there was a gentleman who was a rally participant that compared the williams scenario to george bush and the current war. he basically said that if tookie was being held responsible/incarcerated for starting the crips and all that came with it, then shouldnt bush be held in the same light for the iraqi war and its current state of affairs?

if tookie is granted clemency, then what will happen? with the work that he has done and plans to do, do any of you think that he will attempt to get himself released from prison?

i will say that now i am not as clear on this issue as i was before.

I'm not really worried about residual violence. I don't think that he's still an icon to that many men on the street who are in the "life". As for those in jail, this is not the first time they've killed some one in Marin County, they have it down to a SCIENCE. Every time there's an execution, it's on the Bay Area news in a special late night feature, and the radios cover it etc. We don't kill people as often as Texas, but enough that they've thought about what *could* happen in the rest of the population afterwards.

Regarding his Nobel prize nomination, just like any other award, many are called for nomination, but the chosen are few for the actual award......

Re: Please overlook typos and grammar issues I am in a rush...
 

When you put it this way, no, I do not feel comfortable with my founders being put on trial and held accountable for the actions of others.

I do not know enough about the case to know whether or not the evidence is circumstantial, but I do also think that perspective has a lot to do with this issue.

I also agree with you that there are people who look at BGLO's as gangs. Having worked with gang members, I know some of them look at it that way. However, we do positive things for our communities and have done so for years. I know that other gangs were founded in prison for protection from the Crips, Latin Kings, etc. They were not founded for the betterment of their communities but for protection from other gangs. While they put on the FRONT of trying to better communities, they're only doing so to continue their real work, which is illegal. While some members of our orgs do illegal things, that is not the basis of our foundings.

Re: i watched the bet special.....
 

Me either.

Re: i watched the bet special.....
 

You hit the nail on the head why I have a problem with it. I really do think that he's on death row for creating the crips than the murder he's accussed of. Yes he created a dangerous gang, but to hold him accountable for every single member of the crips who's committed a crime? I have a problem with that.

Re: Re: i watched the bet special.....
 

hubby and i were chatting about this last night. i am thinking that perhaps williams making a complete turn around and participating in the solution (writing books against ganglife, working with the naacp) and doing something to enhance the quality of life of our community (writing childrens books), is a significant way he is repaying for his crimes and contribution to gang life.

because our justice system is so flawed, when there are people who are actually doing what they are suppose to do as convicted felons of tookie's magnitude, perhaps the system doesnt know what to do with that 'energy' or in some cases doesnt want to invest in taking the time.

i do think that he is indirectly responsible. he created the vehicle by which many of our people have lost their lives and/or have contributed to our community's problems. he does and should bear that burden.

Urbanizd,
While I don't want him to be put to death, I think that due to the huge amount of publicity it has received (so folk doing crime may actually *know* about the execution, which is usually not the case) it just may deter some from at least being involved in activity that could lead to lives being lost.

I don't think that the death penalty is focused on bringing people back. I think it's moreso supposed to serve as a deterrent to others.

I have to acknowledge that what he started has been to the demise of AAs. Save one life possibly but how many have we lost?

Well, at least he did good things with his life iafter he was jailed. He has touched more lives than some people who die of natural causes ever will....in good ways and in not so good ways.

I originally posted this in the Kappa forum, not realizing it was being discussed here:


I am not against the death penalty. However, studies show that death sentences are disproportionately handed to minorities as opposed to whites. But in this particular case, I feel that he has what is coming to him. Yeah, he is supposedly "reformed" but don't many of the people in jail claim to have found religion?

Further, think about the monster that this man created. Think about all of the lives, especially the innocent lives, that have been taken as a result of the gang this man founded. Gangs have become a major killer in the African American community, largely as a result of the gang that he created and the glorification of gang life in media or whathaveyou. The black people- gang memebers and innocent people- who have died as a result of the organization he created did not have their lives spared- why should he? Yeah, he has written children's books and vowed to be an upstanding human being, but who know what the people who've died as a result of his gang would have done with their lives- who knows what kind of leaders they would have become and how they would have uplifted the black community.

If there was a former slavemaster on death row, claiming that he found god and is reformed, begging for clemency black people would be up in arms. Here we have a man who is directly or indirectly responsible for taking the lives of so many of our people and for destroying so many of our familes and here we are begging for his life to be spared...I just can't get with that.

SummerChild, you wrote, "it just may deter some from at least being involved in activity that could lead to lives being lost".

Unfortunately, it hasn't sunk (nor skimmed the surface) into the minds nor hearts of many young men living on a thuggish mentality.

Minutes after attending a peaceful protest outside the gates of San Quentin Prison, Nino, a young African-American male (whom I personally know would have made a positive impact on the hip-hop/rap culture), was gunned down in his Richmond, Ca. neighborhood.

Why???? Because he, Nino, sports LOCS as his "do" of choice. For what I was told, there is a thug-group in Richmond that has called a war on another thug-group that wears locs and gets high on a mix of estasy and purple before doing their thug-thangs.

Sadly, Nino's untimely and senseless death was not only a case of mistaken identity, but is an example of how basically, NOTHING appeals to the conscienceness of some young men...NOTHING!

***And because brothaman's job has him inside, upclose and personal with the CDC (California Department of Corrections) System and I have to listen and allow him to air-and-vent-his-day-for-the-sake-of-sanity, I won't weigh in on Tookie either.

Shalom~

Does anyone know the details on the murder(s)? Like, I'm unclear on the evidence, etc. Is it circumstantial? What all is it?

Thanks
Nate

Clemency denied
 

This isn't surprising. Schwarzenegger is an unpopular governor who is seeking reelection and there's no way that he erodes his already shaky base by keeping STW from frying:

Williams Denied Clemency

By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago



Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams, the former gang leader whose case stirred debate over capital punishment and the possibility of redemption on death row.

Williams, 51, is set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison after midnight for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.

Hollywood stars and death penalty opponents mounted a campaign to save his life, making him one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebres in decades. His supporters argued that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had made amends during more than two decades in prison by writing a memoir and children's books about the dangers of gangs.

Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.

Williams stands to become the 12th California condemned inmate executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a brief hiatus.

Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down a clerk in a convenience store holdup and a mother, father and daughter in a motel robbery weeks later. Williams claimed he was innocent.

The last time a California governor granted clemency was in 1967, when Ronald Reagan spared a mentally infirm killer.

Less than 12 hours before the execution was set to take place, the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals said it would not intervene because, among other things, there was no "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence."

In his last-ditch appeal, Williams claimed that he should have been allowed to argue at his trial that someone else killed one of the four victims, and that shoddy forensics connected him to the other killings.

Williams was convicted of killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at a Los Angeles motel the family owned, and Albert Owens, 26, a 7-Eleven clerk gunned down in Whittier.

Among the celebrities who took up Williams' cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in "Dead Man Walking"; Bianca Jagger; and former "M A S H" star Mike Farrell. During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.

"If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked, "what meaning does clemency retain in this state?"

The impending execution resulted in feverish preparations over the weekend by those on both sides of the debate, with the California Highway Patrol planning to tighten security outside the prison, where hundreds of protesters were expected.

A group of about three dozen death penalty protesters were joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson as they marched across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn Monday en route to the gates of San Quentin, where they were expected to rally with hundreds of people.

At least publicly, the person apparently least occupied with his fate seemed to be Williams himself.

"Me fearing what I'm facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me?" Williams said in a recent interview. "If it's my time to be executed, what's all the ranting and raving going to do?"

....
 

im sad about this. but this situation does beg the questions, what does constitute in society's eyes as being fully rehabilitated? should there be opportunities for criminals, especially violent offenders to attempt 'change' or should they just rot or be put to death?