Stanley Williams

Shortly after his release, Williams was approached by Raymond Washington at Washington Preparatory High School after hearing of Williams through a mutual friend of both young men. The friend had informed Washington of Williams' toughness and his willingness to fight members of larger, more established street gangs such as the L.A. Brims and the Chain Gang. According to Williams' account of the meeting, what struck him about Washington was that, besides being incredibly muscular, he and his cohort were dressed similar to Williams and his clique, wearing leather jackets with starched Levi's jeans and suspenders. Washington was from South Central's East Side, where he was a prominent gangster similar to Williams, and proposed they use their influence in their respective regions to form the larger Crips street gang. The purpose for creating the gang initially was to eliminate all street gangs and create a "bull force" neighborhood watch in South Central. Williams said: "We started out—at least my intent was to, in a sense, address all of the so-called neighboring gangs in the area and to put, in a sense—I thought 'I can cleanse the neighborhood of all these, you know, marauding gangs.' But I was totally wrong. And eventually, we morphed into the monster we were addressing." Williams himself has stated that he founded the Crips not with the intention of eliminating other gangs, but to create a force powerful enough to protect local black people from racism, corruption and brutality at the hands of the police. At the time of the Crips' initial formation there were only three Crip sets: Washington's East Side Crips (later called East Coast Crips), Williams' West Side Crips, and the Compton Crips, led by a teenager named Mac Thomas. Williams formed the West Side Crips using his own influence, having befriended so many clique leaders and street thugs on the West Side. Washington, Williams and Thomas went on an aggressive and violent recruitment campaign throughout the black ghettos of Los Angeles, where they challenged the leaders of other gangs to one-on-one street fights. This process resulted in most gangs agreeing to join the Crips, and they were converted from small independent cliques into subgroups (sets) of a gang within the larger gang. The Crips quickly became the biggest street gang in South Central by both numbers and territory, however, numerous gangs still resisted losing their independence. These hold-out gangs formed a similar alliance to combat the Crips' influence, branding themselves as the Bloods, and would become their fiercest rivals. Williams' former rivals, the L.A. Brims and the Chain Gang, joined the Blood alliance and became The Brims and The Inglewood Family Bloods, respectively.

On December 13, 2005, Williams was executed by lethal injection after extensive appeals for clemency and a four-week stay of execution were both rejected by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The prosecution had removed three black people from serving as jurors in Williams' trial. Williams' lawyers claimed that he was convicted by a jury that had no African-Americans, one Latino, one Filipino-American, and 10 White Americans. The District Attorney provided proof, however, in the form of a death certificate and the affidavit of another juror, that juror #12, William James McLurkin, was black. The defense responded that, contrary to the affidavit, McLurkin did not appear black. They maintain that the trial record indicates that none of the lawyers, and particularly the prosecutor, additional evidence in a November 2005 petition for clemency. According to the clemency petition, in his closing arguments, prosecuting District Attorney Robert Martin described Williams as a "Bengal tiger in captivity in a zoo" and said that the jury needed to imagine him in his natural "habitat", which was like "going into the back country, into the hinterlands." In a radio interview, Martin insisted that the analogy was not meant to be racial, and instead was a metaphor to the fact that Williams appeared in court dressed in business attire much like an animal in a zoo appears more docile than it would be in the wild. In the Court of Appeal summary of the case, Williams stated that various jurors misconstrued as a threat a question that he asked defense counsel at the close of the guilt phase. The trial record shows that after the jurors returned their guilty verdicts, Williams said, "Sons of bitches" in a voice sufficiently loud that the court reporter included it in the trial transcript. On the day that the jury began its penalty-phase deliberations, an alternate juror reported to the bailiff that he was going to get all of them.

On December 8, 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger held a clemency hearing at a one-hour, closed-door meeting, where a crowd consisting of both supporters of Williams and proponents of capital punishment congregated outside the California State Capitol in Sacramento. Schwarzenegger described the decision whether to grant clemency as "the toughest thing when you are governor, dealing with someone's life." While the clemency petition was pending before the governor, Williams also filed further appeals in the courts. On November 30, 2005, the California Supreme Court, in a 4–3 decision, refused to reopen Williams' case. On December 11, 2005, the California Supreme Court denied Williams' request for a stay of execution. Supporters of Williams also made another plea directly to Governor Schwarzenegger to stay the execution.

Also during this period, the media, community organizations, and relatives of the victims were speaking out. In mid-November 2005, talk show hosts John and Ken of the John and Ken Show on Clear Channel's KFI radio in Los Angeles started a "Tookie Must Die (For Killing Four Innocent People)" hour on their show daily until the execution of Williams. In the hour, they interviewed advocates of both sides of the issue and expressed their support of the impending execution. Many anti-death penalty and civil rights organizations around the country organized activist campaigns to stop the execution, including the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the NAACP, A.N.S.W.E.R., and others. Tookie's friend, co-author and political collaborator, Barbara Becnel, helped to spearhead much of the organizing. Celebrities also joined to stop the execution, including Snoop Dogg, who appeared at a clemency rally wearing a shirt advertising the Save Tookie website and performed a song he had written for Williams. Jamie Foxx, noting that Williams' execution date was his birthday, publicly stated that the only birthday present he wanted was clemency for Williams. Other prisoners were also involved in activism to save Williams's life, including Tony Ford, whose death sentence in a disputed case was indefinitely stayed, helped organize a prisoners strike in Texas protesting the execution. On November 29, 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California announced that more than 175,000 Californians had signed a petition requesting the temporary suspension of executions in California until the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice could complete its study, due for December 31, 2007. The "California Moratorium on Executions Act", A.B.1121, was scheduled to have its first hearing in January 2006. Press conferences and rallies in more than a dozen California cities called for a halt to all executions and asked Governor Schwarzenegger to commute Williams' death sentence to life without parole.

On December 8, 2005, Lora Owens, the stepmother of Albert Owens, made a statement expressing her opinion of Stanley Williams: "I think he [Williams] is the same cold-blooded killer that he was then and he would be now if he had the opportunity again." Owens' two daughters, who were 8 and 5 years old when their father was murdered, also opposed clemency and recalled that they were shocked when they had learned that their father's murderer was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. By contrast, on December 9, 2005, Linda Owens, Albert Owens' widow, issued a statement in support of Williams' efforts to bring an end to gang violence and his call for peace between gangs: "I, Linda Owens want to build upon Mr. Williams' peace initiative. I invite Mr. Williams to join me in sending a message to all communities that we should all unite in peace. This position of peace would honor my husband's memory and Mr. Williams' work."

On December 12, 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency for Williams. In his denial, Governor Schwarzenegger cited the following:

On December 13, 2005, sixteen days away from his 52nd birthday, after exhausting all forms of appeal, Williams was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison. Newsweek reported thousands of protesters outside, most of whom were seeking Williams' clemency. He was the 12th person to be executed by the state of California following the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Gregg v. Georgia. Williams provided no last words to the prison warden, but in an interview on WBAI Pacifica radio hours before the execution, he stated:

Williams' body was laid out for viewing on December 19, 2005 and drew 2,000 mourners. A memorial service was held in Los Angeles on December 20, 2005, where Becnel read his final wishes. Williams' funeral filled the 1,500-seat Bethel AME Church and drew a wide variety of people from current gang members to celebrities and religious leaders. On June 25, 2006, Barbara Becnel and Williams' longtime friend, Shirley Neal, sprinkled his ashes into a lake in Thokoza Park in the city of Soweto, South Africa as Williams had wished.

Williams became inmate CDC# C29300 at San Quentin State Prison in northern California, and spent 6 years in solitary confinement in the late 1980s for multiple assaults on guards and fellow inmates. According to a classification report found on page 8 of filings by his lawyers during the clemency proceedings dated August 5, 2004, Williams had no violations since that time.

Tookie Williams appealed his conviction in the state courts, and filed a petition in the federal courts for habeas corpus relief. The State courts affirmed the conviction, and the lower federal court denied the habeas corpus petition. In 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard Williams' appeal from the lower federal court, and the appellate court denied Williams' appeal in 2002, but noted that the federal courts were not his only forum for relief and that he could request clemency from the Governor of California. In late 2005, a campaign began to urge Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency for Williams in consideration of his work as an anti-gang activist, with thousands of people signing online petitions calling for Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence. In early November 2005, Williams' attorneys filed his formal petition for executive clemency, as well as a motion to obtain new evidence. (See below for the full text of the documents filed in these proceedings.) California opposed the clemency petition through the office of the Los Angeles County District Attorney, who along with the Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement groups, disputed that Williams had in fact reformed. They stated that he refused to inform officials on other gang members or the tactics and communication methods that the gangs used, as Williams said he did not want to be a "snitch." The clemency petition emphasized the theme of Williams' redemption and rehabilitation rather than his claim of actual innocence. The San Francisco Chronicle writer Bob Egelko doubted this method, based on the courts handling the appeals, and quoted Austin Sarat, professor of law and politics at Amherst College and author of Mercy on Trial, a book about clemency: "It's [actual innocence] about the only ground in which governors grant clemency in the modern period...I know of no case in which a death row inmate has been spared (solely) on the basis of post-conviction rehabilitation."

In October of 1988, Williams was seriously injured by a knife-wielding assailant in San Quentin State Prison.

In 1981, Williams was convicted of four counts of murder committed in two of three separate incidents. Williams always maintained his innocence, though subsequent court reviews concluded that there was no compelling reason to grant a retrial.

Stanley Williams was convicted in 1981 of all four murders with aggravating circumstances on each count of felony murder (robbery) as well as multiple murder in the case of the Brookhaven event. The jury also convicted him of robbery in both cases, and found that he personally used a firearm in the commission of the crimes. The jury returned a verdict of Guilty, and the judge sentenced him to death.

The prosecution stated that Williams met with a man identified in court documents only as "Darryl" late on Tuesday evening, February 28, 1979. Williams introduced Darryl to friends of his, Alfred "Blackie" Coward and to Bernard "Whitie" Trudeau, and a short time after the initial meeting, Darryl, driving a brown station wagon and accompanied by Williams and Coward drove to the home of James Garret. Williams frequently stayed and kept some possessions at Garret's home, including a 12-gauge shotgun, and after about 10 minutes inside, Williams returned with the shotgun. Williams, Darryl and Coward then went to the home of Tony Sims in Pomona, where they discussed possible locations to obtain money through robbery. Afterwards, they went to another residence where Williams left the others and returned with a .22-caliber pistol, and placed it in the station wagon. Darryl and Williams entered the station wagon, Coward and Sims entered another vehicle, and then embarked on the freeway. Both vehicles exited the freeway at California State Route 72 (Whittier Boulevard). The first incident occurred at a nearby Stop-N-Go supermarket, where Darryl and Sims, at the request of Williams, entered the store with the apparent intention of robbing it. Darryl was carrying the .22 pistol that Williams had deposited in the station wagon earlier, and also had a rifle in the trunk of the car, along with two semi-automatic handguns. The clerk at the Stop-N-Go market, Johnny Garcia, had just finished mopping the floor when he observed a station wagon and the four men at the door to the market. Two of the men entered the market and one of the men went down an aisle, while the other approached Garcia asking for a cigarette. Garcia gave the man a cigarette and lit it for him. After approximately three to four minutes, the men left the market without carrying out the planned robbery.

The third incident occurred at the Brookhaven Motel located at 10411 South Vermont Avenue in South Central Los Angeles, which was run by 76-year-old Yen-Yi Yang and his wife, 63-year old Tsai-Shai C. Yang, their daughter, 43-year-old Yu-Chin Yang Lin, and their son, Robert. The Yangs were immigrants from Taiwan, and Yu-Chin had recently joined them in the United States to run the hotel. According to the prosecutors, at approximately 5:00 a.m. on March 11, 1979, Williams entered the Brookhaven Motel lobby and then broke down the door that led to the private office. Inside the office, Williams shot and killed Yen-Yi, Tsai-Shai, and Yu-Chin, after which he emptied the cash register and fled the scene. Robert, asleep with his wife in their bedroom at the motel, was awakened by the sound of somebody breaking down the door to the motel's office. Shortly thereafter he heard a female scream, followed by gunshots. Robert entered the motel office and found that his mother, his sister, and his father had all been shot, and the cash register was empty. The forensic pathologist testified that Yen-Yi Yang suffered two close range shotgun wounds, one to his left arm and abdomen, and one to the lower left chest. Tsai-Shai also received two close range wounds, one to the tailbone, and the other to the front of the abdomen, entering at the navel. Yu-Chin Yang Lin was shot once in the upper left face area at a distance of a few feet. Witnesses testified that Williams referred to the victims in conversations with friends as "Buddha-heads."

In 1976, Williams was wounded in a drive-by shooting while sitting on the porch of his house in Compton. The shooting was committed by members of the Bloods, who shot at Williams from their car as he was letting his dog out for a walk in the evening. Attempting to avoid getting hit, Williams dove to the ground from the porch, but was shot in both of his legs. Williams was told by doctors that he would never walk again, but after a nearly year-long process of physical rehabilitation and an intense workout regimen, he ultimately regained his ability to walk. After the shooting, Williams re-developed a substance abuse problem when he began smoking PCP. Williams had begun dabbling in street drugs around the age of twelve, and as a preteen befriended a neighborhood pimp who, in return for performing errands for him, would reward Williams with money and drugs, particularly Quaaludes, barbiturates (then known as "Red Devils") or marijuana. Williams' personal life began to unravel: his maternal grandmother, with whom he was very close, died in 1976. He lost his counseling job in 1977 after being implicated in a robbery that was committed by two youths from a group home that Williams supervised. He was denied an opportunity to compete in an amateur bodybuilding contest after it was discovered that he was a gang leader (Williams would later appear on the 1970s variety show The Gong Show performing a posedown routine). Eventually his gangster lifestyle was beginning to take a mental toll on him, which included a brief stay in the psychiatric ward of a hospital after Williams experienced a bad trip while high on PCP. With each of these setbacks Williams increasingly found himself using PCP, and supported his drug habit by intimidating and robbing drug dealers in South Central.

Soon after the foundation of the Crips, other leaders were either murdered or incarcerated, and Williams was regarded as the de facto leader. In 1974, Raymond Washington was arrested for 2nd degree robbery and served five years in prison in Tracy, and soon after was murdered. On February 23, 1973, Curtis "Buddha" Morrow was shot to death in South Central following a petty argument. Mac Thomas was murdered under mysterious circumstances in the mid-1970s. Williams began to live an ironic double life, where he worked in a legal job as an anti-gang youth counselor in Compton while also serving as the overboss for one of the largest gangs in Los Angeles. Williams would work as a counselor and study Sociology at Compton College during working hours, then spend his free time participating in numerous violent attacks against the Bloods.

In 1969, at age sixteen, Williams was arrested in Inglewood for car theft and was sent to the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey. While doing time at the detention center, Williams was introduced to Olympic weightlifting by the facility's gym coach, and this experience would spark an interest in bodybuilding. By his release from custody in early 1971, aged seventeen, Williams was physically bigger and stronger. According to Williams, upon his release from custody the review board asked him what he planned to do after being released, to which he replied "being the leader of the biggest gang in the world."

In the late 1960s, juvenile crime increased in South Central as older gangs disbanded to join the Black Power Movement, most notably as part of the Black Panther Party, initially to protect black people from police brutality and corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. Increasingly violent youth gangs formed in their place, which Williams initially despised as predatory, but because of his viciousness and willingness to fight older youths Williams earned the respect of many gangsters on the West Side. These gangs were mostly small-time neighborhood cliques that operated independently from each other, and leadership was not chosen but determined naturally. At age fifteen, Williams was invited into a small West Side clique after he befriended a local teenager, Donald "Doc/Sweetback" Archie. Williams soon earned the clique's respect after beating up one of their members for insulting his mother, and Williams became the unofficial leader of this clique as his violent reputation began to spread across South Central.

Stanley Tookie Williams III (December 29, 1953 – December 13, 2005) was a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, an International Peace Mediator, and the co-founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles, California. In 1971, Williams and Raymond Washington formed an alliance establishing the Crips as the first major African-American street gang in South Central Los Angeles. Williams became the de facto leader and the prominent crime boss in South Central in the 1970s. In 1979, Williams was convicted for the murder of four people during two robberies, and was sentenced to death. The highly publicized trial of Williams and extensive appeals for clemency sparked debate on the status of the death penalty in California.

Tookie was born on December 29, 1953, in Shreveport, Louisiana, to a 17-year-old mother, and his family moved to New Orleans. His father abandoned the family when Williams was just a year old, and in 1959, Williams moved with his mother, Louisiana Williams, to Los Angeles, California, and settled in the city's South Central region.