Stanley Williams

• 1. Introduction

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  Stanley Tookie Williams III was seventeen when a juvenile review board asked what he planned to do once he was released. By his own account, he replied with "being the leader of the biggest gang in the world." He was a teenager with a record and a reputation, but he did not yet lead anything. Williams went on to co-found the Crips, which became Los Angeles' first major African-American street gang. Through the 1970s he was the man in charge in practice, and the prominent crime boss of South Los Angeles. How does a street fighter from South Central assemble an army of young men, and what happens when the men around him begin to die? What did a Los Angeles jury decide he had done in 1979, and why did he insist for the rest of his life that it was wrong? And why did his fate divide so many people who never met him?

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• 2. Fighter in South Central

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  Stanley Williams was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on the 29th of December 1953. He was christened Stanley Tookie Williams III, but nearly everyone used his middle name, Tookie. His father walked out when the boy was one year old. In 1959 his mother, Louisiana Williams, moved them to Los Angeles, where they settled in South Central.

  Louisiana Williams held several jobs to support the household, so her son spent much of his childhood unsupervised. He drifted through the streets and picked up money from men known as hustlers. Williams later recalled how they wagered on everything, including "pay-per-view street fights among individuals between six and fifty years of age." He added that "Older hustlers would bet on children to fight."

  Sometimes the work was gentler. After dogfights, Williams said, he was paid a couple of dollars to look after the injured dogs. As a teenager he was also paid to fight himself, and he became known as a vicious brawler on South Central's West Side. That reputation, along with other traits that made him intimidating, got him expelled from George Washington Preparatory High School. Several other high schools in the area refused to admit him.

  Drugs entered his life early. Around the age of twelve he began dabbling in street drugs. A neighborhood pimp paid him in money and drugs for running errands, including marijuana, Quaaludes and barbiturates then known as Red Devils.

  The neighborhood itself was shifting. In the late 1960s, many members of older gangs left to join the Black Power Movement, most notably the Black Panther Party. The Panthers initially aimed to protect black residents from police brutality and corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. In the gap they left, juvenile crime rose and more violent youth gangs appeared. Williams at first despised those gangs as predatory.

  Even so, his willingness to fight older youths won him respect among many gangsters on the West Side. Those gangs were small neighborhood cliques that operated independently, so leaders were never elected and emerged informally. At fifteen, Williams was invited into one such clique after befriending a local teenager named Donald Archie, whom friends called Doc or Sweetback. He earned the group's respect by beating up a member who had insulted his mother. Soon he was its unofficial leader, and his violent reputation was spreading across South Central.

  In 1969 he was arrested in Inglewood for car theft.

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• 3. The Alliance

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  At Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, a gym coach introduced Williams to Olympic weightlifting. The sport sparked a lasting interest in bodybuilding. By the time Williams was released, he was visibly bigger and stronger.

  Shortly afterward, Raymond Washington found him at Washington Preparatory High School. A friend the two young men shared had told Washington about Williams' toughness and his readiness to fight members of larger gangs, such as the L.A. Brims and the Chain Gang. Williams remembered being struck by Washington's powerful build. Washington and his companions also dressed like Williams and his crew, in leather jackets, starched Levi's jeans and suspenders.

  Washington came from the East Side and was as prominent there as Williams was in the west. He proposed using their local influence to build one larger gang, the Crips. The original purpose, as Williams told it, was to wipe out the other street gangs and set up a "bull force" neighborhood watch across South Central. He thought he could "cleanse the neighborhood" of what he called "marauding gangs." Then came his own verdict: "But I was totally wrong. And eventually, we morphed into the monster we were addressing."

  He also offered a second explanation. In that version, he created the Crips to build a force strong enough to protect local black residents from racism, corruption and police brutality, rather than to destroy rival gangs.

  At the start there were only three Crip sets. Washington led the East Side Crips, later renamed the East Coast Crips. Williams led the West Side Crips, later known as the Eight Tray Gangster Crips. A teenager named Mac Thomas led the Compton Crips. Williams built his set from friendships with clique leaders and street toughs across the West Side.

  The three then set out on a violent recruitment drive through the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles. They challenged the leaders of other gangs to one-on-one fights. Most gangs, beaten, agreed to join, and small independent cliques became sets within the larger gang. The Crips quickly outgrew every rival in South Central, in membership and in territory.

  Not everyone surrendered independence. Hold-out gangs formed their own alliance and called themselves the Bloods, who became the Crips' fiercest enemies. Williams' old rivals, the L.A. Brims and the Chain Gang, joined them. They became the Brims and the Inglewood Family Bloods.

  After the Crips formed, Williams was sent back to juvenile custody, first to Los Padrinos and then to Central Juvenile Hall. The charge was a robbery at Clifton's restaurant, and he denied taking part.

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• 4. A Double Life

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  Curtis "Buddha" Morrow was Williams' best friend, and together the two terrorized South Central, Watts, Inglewood and Compton. Their violence fell on rival gang members and innocent people alike, and Williams became the template for a new kind of Los Angeles gangster. Charges against him repeatedly collapsed because prosecutors lacked evidence. Morrow did not last. On the 23rd of February 1973 he was shot to death in South Central after a petty argument.

  Other founders fell away as well. Raymond Washington was arrested in 1974 for second-degree robbery and served two years in prison in Tracy. He was murdered soon after his release. Mac Thomas was killed under mysterious circumstances in the mid-1970s. With the others dead or imprisoned, Williams was regarded as the gang's de facto leader.

  Meanwhile he lived a strikingly contradictory double life. During working hours he was an anti-gang youth counselor in Compton, and he studied sociology at Compton College. In his free time he joined violent attacks on the Bloods.

  The Bloods struck back in 1976. One evening Williams was on the porch of his Compton house, letting his dog out, when men in a car opened fire. He dove for cover but was hit in both legs. Doctors told him he would never walk again. After almost a year of rehabilitation and punishing workouts, he walked again.

  His life began to come apart. He took up smoking PCP, and the substance abuse problem he had first developed as a child returned. His maternal grandmother, to whom he was very close, died in 1976. In 1977 he lost his counseling job after being implicated in a robbery committed by two youths from a group home he supervised. Organizers refused to let him enter an amateur bodybuilding contest once they learned he led a gang. He would later perform a posedown routine on the NBC game show The Gong Show.

  The lifestyle also took a mental toll, including a brief stay in a hospital psychiatric ward after a bad PCP trip. To pay for the drug, he intimidated and robbed drug dealers in South Central.

  His time as an active Crip ended in 1979, when police arrested him on charges of murdering four people.

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• 5. The Prosecution's Account

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  Prosecutors said it began late on Tuesday the 28th of February 1979, when Williams met a man identified in court documents only as Darryl. Williams introduced him to two friends, Alfred "Blackie" Coward and Bernard "Whitie" Trudeau. Soon afterward Darryl, driving a brown station wagon with Williams and Coward as passengers, went to the home of James Garret. Williams often stayed there and kept belongings in the house, including a 12-gauge shotgun. After about ten minutes inside, he came back out carrying it.

  He, Darryl and Coward then drove to the Pomona home of Tony Sims to discuss places they could rob for money. At another residence Williams went in alone and returned with a .22-caliber pistol. Two vehicles then set off on the freeway, one carrying Williams and Darryl and the other carrying Coward and Sims. They left at California State Route 72, known as Whittier Boulevard.

  The first stop, a Stop-N-Go supermarket, ended without a crime. At Williams' request, Darryl and Sims went in with the apparent aim of robbing it. Darryl carried the .22 pistol, and the car held a rifle and two semi-automatic handguns. Clerk Johnny Garcia had just finished mopping the floor. One man asked him for a cigarette, and Garcia lit it for him. After three or four minutes the men left without robbing the store.

  The second stop, a 7-Eleven at 10437 Whittier Boulevard in Whittier, ended differently. At 7:42 p.m. the clerk, 26-year-old Albert Lewis Owens, was sweeping the parking lot. He set his broom and dustpan on the hood of his car and went in to serve Darryl and Sims. Williams and Coward followed him inside. As the others moved toward the cash register, Williams came up behind Owens, drew the shotgun from under his jacket and told him to "shut up and keep walking."

  Williams marched Owens at gunpoint to a back storage room and ordered him to lie down. Coward later said he heard a round being chambered, then a shot and breaking glass, then two more shots. Williams had fired at a security monitor first. He then killed Owens with two shots to the back at point-blank range as Owens lay face down.

  The third incident came at about five in the morning on the 11th of March 1979, at the Brookhaven Motel on South Vermont Avenue in South Central. The motel, at number 10411, was run by Tsai-Shai Yang, 65, and his wife Yi-Chen Lin, 62, with their daughter Yen-Yi Yang, 43, and their son Robert. The family were immigrants from Taiwan, and Yen-Yi had only recently joined them in the United States.

  Robert had been asleep with his wife in their bedroom. The sound of a door being broken woke him, and he heard a woman scream and then gunshots. He reached the office only after the shots had stopped, and found his mother, sister and father shot and the register empty.

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• 6. Trial and Doubt

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  In 1981 a jury convicted Williams of all four murders, finding felony-murder circumstances on each count because the killings took place during robberies. For the motel deaths it also found the circumstance of multiple murder. He was convicted of robbery in both cases, and the jury found that he personally used a firearm. The judge sentenced him to death.

  Williams maintained his innocence from the start. He alleged prosecutorial misconduct, the exclusion of evidence that could clear him, ineffective assistance from his lawyers, biased jury selection and misuse of jailhouse and government informants. Later court reviews found no compelling reason to give him a new trial.

  Much of the argument centered on physical evidence. Williams said police found "not a shred of tangible evidence, no fingerprints." At trial, a sheriff's deputy serving as the prosecution's firearms expert testified that the shell recovered at the Brookhaven Motel matched test shells from Williams' shotgun. No second examiner verified his findings, and the defense called his methods "junk science at best." The two shells from the 7-Eleven were consistent with that gun, with no exclusionary markings. The prosecution claimed the motel shell matched "to the exclusion of all other firearms."

  The gun itself turned up in the home of a couple Williams sometimes stayed with. According to the District Attorney, the husband was undergoing sentencing for receiving stolen property and was tried for extortion. Williams' lawyers claimed that the District Attorney dropped a murder investigation in exchange for the couple's testimony.

  The makeup of the jury drew separate fire. Prosecutors had removed three black people from the panel. Williams' lawyers said the jury that convicted him included no African-Americans, one Latino, one Filipino-American and ten White Americans. The District Attorney answered with a death certificate and a juror's affidavit showing that juror number 12, William James McLurkin, was black. The defense replied that McLurkin did not appear black, and that the trial record suggested no lawyer in the case thought he was.

  In his closing argument, District Attorney Robert Martin compared Williams to a "Bengal tiger in captivity in a zoo" and asked the jury to picture him in his natural "habitat." Martin later insisted on the radio that the comparison was not racial. He said it meant that Williams, in business attire in court, looked as docile as a zoo animal does next to one in the wild.

  After the verdicts, Williams muttered an insult loud enough that the court reporter put it in the transcript. Later an alternate juror told the bailiff that Williams had said he would get all of them. Three other alternates denied hearing any such remark.

  Williams became inmate CDC# C29300 at San Quentin State Prison. In the late 1980s he spent six years in solitary confinement for multiple assaults on guards and other inmates. A classification report cited in his lawyers' August 2004 clemency filings recorded no violations since then. In October 1988, a fellow inmate named Tiequon Cox stabbed him in the neck and seriously injured him.

  Critics argued that, despite renouncing gangs and apologizing for co-founding the Crips, he kept associating with Crips in prison. Los Angeles police spokeswoman April Harding said there was no evidence he led the gang. Opponents also noted that he received a good deal of money from outside sources. His spokeswoman, Barbara Becnel, said admirers of his work sent it. "It's as simple as that," she said.

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• 7. The Clemency Fight

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  In 2001 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard Williams' appeal, after state courts had affirmed his conviction and a lower federal court had rejected his habeas corpus petition. The Ninth Circuit denied the appeal in 2002. It noted that he could still ask the Governor of California for clemency.

  A campaign for exactly that began in late 2005, aimed at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Thousands of people signed online petitions asking him to reduce the death sentence in light of Williams' work as an anti-gang activist. In early November his attorneys filed a formal clemency petition and a motion to gather new evidence.

  The petition stressed redemption rather than actual innocence. Austin Sarat, a professor of law and politics at Amherst College and author of Mercy on Trial, was quoted by San Francisco Chronicle writer Bob Egelko doubting that approach. Sarat said he knew of "no case in which a death row inmate has been spared (solely) based on post-conviction rehabilitation."

  The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, the Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement groups opposed clemency. They disputed that Williams had reformed, pointing out that he refused to tell officials about other gang members or how gangs operated and communicated. Williams said he did not want to be a "snitch."

  The courts offered no relief. On the 30th of November 2005 the California Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, refused to reopen his case. On the 11th of December it denied a request to stay the execution.

  Support for Williams came from many directions. The Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the NAACP and A.N.S.W.E.R. ran campaigns, and his friend and co-author Barbara Becnel helped lead the organizing. Rapper Snoop Dogg appeared at a clemency rally in a shirt promoting the Save Tookie website and performed a song he had written for Williams. Actor Jamie Foxx noted that the execution date was his birthday and said the only present he wanted was clemency. Tony Ford, a prisoner whose death sentence in a disputed case had been stayed indefinitely, helped organize a prison strike in Texas.

  On the 29th of November 2005 the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California announced that more than 175,000 Californians had signed a petition. It asked for a temporary suspension of executions until the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice finished its study, due by the 31st of December 2007. A bill for a moratorium, A.B. 1121, was due its first hearing in January 2006.

  On the other side, talk show hosts John and Ken of Clear Channel's KFI radio in Los Angeles began a daily hour in mid-November. They called it "Tookie Must Die (For Killing Four Innocent People)" and kept it going until the execution.

  The victims' relatives were not united. On the 8th of December 2005, Lora Owens, the stepmother of Albert Owens, said she believed Williams was "the same cold-blooded killer that he was then." Owens' two daughters, aged eight and five when their father was murdered, also opposed clemency. They said they were shocked to learn that their father's killer had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Albert Owens' widow, Linda Owens, took the opposite view on the 9th of December. She said she wanted to build on Williams' peace initiative, and invited him to join her in urging all communities to unite in peace.

  On the 8th of December, Schwarzenegger held a one-hour, closed-door clemency hearing while supporters and backers of capital punishment gathered outside the State Capitol in Sacramento. He called the decision "the toughest thing when you are governor, dealing with someone's life." On the 12th of December he denied clemency. He wrote that the courts had thoroughly reviewed the possible trial irregularities, and that it was "impossible to separate Williams' claim of innocence from his claim of redemption."

  He also pointed to the dedication in Williams' book Life in Prison. The inclusion of George Jackson on the list of names, he wrote, was a sign that Williams had not reformed. His central argument was this: "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption." He said his decision rested on the "totality of circumstances."

  On the same day, New York attorney Jonathan Harris filed a response summarizing new evidence of innocence. It included an affidavit from Gordon Bradbury von Ellerman, whose cellmate George Oglesby had testified against Williams. Von Ellerman swore that he saw Oglesby receive police reports on Williams and copy samples of his handwriting to create incriminating documents. Prosecutors had cited handwritten notes by Williams about an escape plan involving the killing of a bus driver and another accomplice.

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• 8. Execution and Aftermath

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  Stanley Williams was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison on the 13th of December 2005, sixteen days before his 52nd birthday. He was the twelfth person California put to death after the 1976 Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia. Newsweek reported thousands of protesters outside, most of them seeking clemency.

  Williams gave the warden no last words. Hours earlier, though, he told a radio interviewer at WBAI Pacifica that his calm came from faith rather than bravado. He said: "I am innocent and, yes, I have been a wretched person, but I have redeemed myself." He added that "redemption is tailor-made for the wretched, and that's what I used to be."

  Witnesses described a somber mood in the execution chamber. Williams offered no resistance, though once strapped down he strained against the straps to look up at the press gallery behind him and trade glances with supporters. Barbara Becnel, who witnessed the execution, wrote later that he had promised to lift his head and smile at her at some point, whatever was done to him. She said he did exactly that.

  Medical technicians then struggled to insert the needles. CNN reported that the usually short process took almost 20 minutes. John Simerman of the Contra Costa Times saw Williams grimace in frustration and heard him ask the technicians, "You guys doing that right?" A guard whispered to him, and a second guard patted his shoulder. Williams shed one silent tear. Members of Albert Owens' family were described as stony-faced, although MSNBC anchor Rita Cosby said Lora Owens appeared very upset.

  Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle had watched five other executions at San Quentin and called this one very different. Supporters at the back of the room gave what looked like black power salutes while Williams was still conscious. As they left, they shouted that the State of California had just killed an innocent man. Fagan said he had never before heard an outburst in that room. Williams was pronounced dead at 12:35 a.m. Pacific time.

  Becnel promised afterward to prove his innocence. Williams' body was laid out for viewing on the 19th of December 2005 and drew 2,000 mourners. A memorial service followed the next day at Bethel AME Church in Los Angeles. The 1,500-seat church filled with people ranging from current gang members to celebrities and religious leaders.

  A tape of Williams' own voice played for the mourners. "The war within me is over. I battled my demons and I was triumphant," he said. He urged them to "promote peace and teach them to focus on rebuilding the neighborhoods that you, others, and I helped to destroy." Snoop Dogg, himself a Crip, recited a poem about the execution. Williams' oldest son, Travon, was the only family member to speak, and he "brought the church to its feet" by promising to teach Schwarzenegger about redemption.

  The execution also set off a backlash in Austria, Schwarzenegger's birth nation. On the 19th of December, left-wing councillors in Graz announced that they were seeking to strip him of his Austrian citizenship. He sent the city a letter that day demanding that his name be removed from a stadium that had carried it since 1997. He also withdrew permission for Graz to use his name in advertising campaigns. His name came off the stadium on the 26th of December.

  On the 25th of June 2006, Becnel and Williams' longtime friend Shirley Neal sprinkled his ashes into a lake in Thokoza Park, in the South African city of Soweto, as he had wished.

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