Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s Governor, rejected an appeal for clemency from Stanley ”Tookie” Williams on Monday, clearing the way for the former gang leader and convicted murderer’s execution on Tuesday morning.
Citing Williams’s refusal to apologise for the 1979 murders, which he has always maintained he did not commit, Schwarzenegger said he could not justify overturning the verdict of the courts.
”Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption,” Schwarzenegger wrote in his published decision.
”The basis of Williams’s clemency request is not innocence. Rather, the basis of the request is the personal redemption Stanley Williams has experienced and the positive impact of the message he sends. But Williams’s claim of innocence remains a key factor to evaluating his claim of personal redemption. It is impossible to separate Williams’s claim of innocence from his claim of redemption.”
The decision was announced shortly after midday in California, less than 12 hours before the scheduled execution by lethal injection. Supporters of Williams, a founder of the Crips gang praised for his anti-gang work inside prison, condemned the decision.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson emerged from a visit with Williams to learn of the decision. Standing in the street leading up to the prison, Jackson expressed his ”disappointment”.
”I feel pain that the governor has made this critical choice and has chosen revenge over redemption,” he said. ”Tookie is no threat to society. He becomes a trophy for some and a martyr for others.”
Others were more forthright in their condemnation of the decision, the third request for clemency in a death penalty case denied by Schwarzenegger since he took office.
Calling the decision ”racist and immoral”, Todd Chretien, an anti-death penalty campaigner who was observing a vigil outside the gates of the prison, said: ”This decision is a gigantic moral failing. It confirms the racism of the death penalty, and sends a message to young Latino and African-American people that the governor and the attorney general do not care about them.”
Williams will be strapped to a trolley and injected with a sedative and potassium chloride to induce paralysis. He will then be given pancuronium bromide to bring on a heart attack. The execution will take place before 50 witnesses.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a political commentator, said the decision was determined by the governor’s faltering political fortunes.
”He’s a conservative Republican, he’s up for a tough re-election next year and he needs the Republican base,” he said. ”This country puts a lot of lip service into the concept of redemption. The message this decision sends is horrible and hypocritical.”
Ellen Kreitzberg, professor of law at Santa Clara University, criticised the governor’s decision on legal grounds.
”He’s making a clemency decision based on a reluctance to go against what has already been decided, whereas clemency is designed to go against previous decisions,” she said.
Williams’s case has attracted unusual levels of support and attention from all over the world. He has been acclaimed for his anti-gang work from inside prison, including a series of children’s books.
A film based on his autobiography, starring Jamie Foxx as Williams, was released last year.
But Schwarzenegger’s ruling questioned the validity of Williams’s redemption, arguing that as a co-founder of the Crips street gang, he was responsible for the deaths caused by gang violence.
”The continued pervasiveness of gang violence leads one to question the efficacy of Williams’s message,” Schwarzenegger wrote, in a response to those who said that Williams was more valuable alive than dead.
Peter Fleming, the attorney who led the plea for clemency on behalf of Williams, said: ”If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency, what meaning does clemency retain in this state?”
In a recent interview with Reuters news agency, Williams appeared calm at the prospect of his execution.
”Me fearing what I’m facing, what possible good is it going to do for me?,” he said. ”How is that going to benefit me? If it’s my time to be executed, what’s all the ranting and raving going to do?” — Guardian Unlimited Â