Stanley Tookie Williams

Tookie Williams was in the news this week. Actually, he was the news. For, at San Quentin, the California Bay Area’s answer to Alcatraz, Stanley Tookie Williams was about to be—and then was—executed.

Now, proselytizing is inevitable, here, so be prepared. It’s important to address a number of issues, yes, with all death penalty cases, but particularly with this case and this individual is it imperative we think about crime, reform, and the act of murder (on the part of both sides). Let’s start at the beginning…or at least earlier on:

His mother was a kid herself. In 1953, when he was born—Stanley Tookie Williams, Tookie his middle name, not a nickname originally--she was 17 years old. While he came into this world in New Orleans, Louisiana, he was soon moved to Los Angeles (when he was 6, to the south central area known for its penury, its high crime rates, and its urban plight.

Tookie, an undaunted leader type, developed a reputation early on for his survival skills—which included, inevitably, a warrior persona. He was known, then, as a/the “General.” By the time he was 18, Tookie Williams was joining the earlier (1969) formed Crips (possibly from the origin of Cribs—such young troupers) gang, taking on the esteemed position as founder and leader of South Central’s West Side chapter.

Keep in mind that given the environs, the Crips was founded by Raymond “Truck” Washington, to—according to numerous original members—reduce violence, protect the neighborhoods, thwart police brutality, at the same time, doing their best, as Tookie Williams would later say, to “cleanse the neighborhood of all these…marauding gangs.”

But regardless of intentions and efforts, by the ripe old age of 26, Stanley Tookie Williams given a new handle—he was convicted of robbery and murder. According to court transcripts, Williams, with Alfred Coward, Tony Sims, and a fourth reported only as Darryl, robbed a 7-11 store on Whittier Boulevard, in Pico Rivera California. During the debacle of what has been called a “botched robbery attempt”, Williams’ partners testified, Tookie shot store clerk Albert Lewis Owens, 26, because, they say Williams admitted, not only did he not want to “leave any witnesses” but also because Owens was white.

The $120 the four men nabbed a lesser consideration, the conversation during the ride away from the 7-11 was focused on some laughing about the gurgling and sputtering manner in which Owens had died.

That was in February of 1979. In March of the same year, the men went into Brookhaven Motel on Vermont Avenue in South Central L.A.. They went to rob the motel, but by the time they left the scene, had put two bullets in 76-year-old motel owner Yen Yi Yang, two into Yang’s wife, 63-year-old Tsai Shai, and one into the face of their daughter, Yee-Chen Lin.

With the $100 they gleaned, they drove away, later discussing (witnesses testified) the death of the Buddha-heads.

Convicted of four murders—in 1981—and sentenced to death, Stanley Tookie Williams asserted his innocence, basing his claim on numerous legal foibles…especially on the absence of blacks on the jury and on lack of evidence, such as the absence of bloody boot prints, fingerprints, and spent shotgun shells to match the gun(s) he owned.

The contradictions and coincidences as such are pointed out by critics often. Tookie apologized for founding the Crips. But he allegedly associated with [suspected] gang members while inside prison. The district attorney for the case played with metaphors that implicated Williams’ race. When he was decided guilty, he responded with an audible comment (“Sons of bitches”) that jury members felt was a threat.

The changes to Williams in prison were statistically common and yet unusually remarkable. In the 80’s, he lived in solitary confinement—for 6 ½ years. He was involved in fights. He threw chemicals in the guards’ faces. He crossed boundaries with female visitors, and when admonished threatened death. He wrote children’s books denouncing gang activity. He spearheaded the Tookie Patrol for Peace, a peace pact established to end the violent conflict between the Crips and by then equally reputed opponent gang, The Bloods. And he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize…purportedly, five times.

But a dead man walking, 24 years after his conviction, Stanley Tookie Williams was scheduled for execution by lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court had rejected Tookie’s appeals for fairer hearings; California state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied clemency. San Quentin visitors on December 12, 2005—one to two thousand—held vigils, protested “state-sponsored murder”, and flocked to be a part of the fateful night. Select press witnessed the execution, as did others. One witness commented that another innocent man has been murdered. A relative broke down sobbing.

The words and definitions bandied about have been and continue to be those semanticists sweat over: clemency and compassion, renouncing and remorse, acclaim and atonement. But, further, the word attached to the act, regardless of the degrees of the act, the details of the act, or the deleterious fallout the act leaves behind is the word we might have the most to say about…murder.

Those of us who did not know the history or did not attend any pre-execution gatherings (those which still recall the days of the guillotine in the city square, with spectators gawking, hawking, knitting, laughing, and ranting) might have had a statement haunting our heads at 12:36 a.m. December 13, 2005: we murder someone for murdering someone.