Stanley "Tookie" Williams was convicted in Los Angeles County in 1981 of four murders committed in two separate events in 1979. Albert Owens, 26, died in Whittier at the end of February. Less than two weeks later, on March 11, Yen-I Yang, 76, his wife Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and their daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, died in Los Angeles. A jury found Williams guilty of four counts of first-degree murder and found all eight special circumstances true. He was sentenced to death in April 1981.
Williams was already known by then as one of the two teenagers who had founded the Crips, the Los Angeles gang. He maintained his innocence until his death, and no court accepted his account. Over the next 24 years he moved through the state and federal courts with a series of appeals while, from death row, he published books for children and teenagers warning against gang life. The books, a 2004 film based on his story and several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and Nobel Prize in Literature made him one of the best-known prisoners in the United States, and by 2005 his clemency petition had the backing of Nobel laureates, entertainers and more than 50,000 signatories.
The final decision turned on whether a man who denied his crimes could claim to have been redeemed. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger decided that he could not. He refused clemency on December 12, 2005, and Williams was executed in California on December 13, 2005, at the age of 51. He was the 12th person executed in California since the death penalty was reinstated.
Williams was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 29, 1953. His mother was 17 and raised him alone. In 1959 she moved with him to South Central Los Angeles, where they lived in a duplex. He attended Fremont High School but was expelled, and he spent periods in Los Angeles's Central Juvenile Hall.
In 1971, with another teenager, he founded a gang first called the Cribs, which became known as the Crips. He later said that he regretted starting it more than anything else he had done. By 1992 he said he had changed and regretted his gang past, and in April 1997 he issued a public apology. He did not apologize for the four murders, which he denied having committed.
Albert Lewis Owens was 26 when he died in Whittier, a city in southeastern Los Angeles County, on or about February 27, 1979.
The prosecution built its case on the testimony of an accomplice who had been granted immunity and who described the events in Whittier, and on witnesses who said Williams spoke afterward about what had happened. Williams said the witnesses had been given deals and were lying. At trial the defense called a witness who said that Williams had been elsewhere on the night in question.
The second event took place on March 11, 1979, in Los Angeles. Three members of one family died: Yen-I Yang, 76, the father; Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, the mother; and their daughter, Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, who was with them.
Prosecutors tied Williams to the deaths through the testimony of witnesses who said he had described the events to them, including a married couple, and through a jail inmate who testified to admissions. The defense called two witnesses who said that Williams had been at a bar on the night in question and challenged the inmate as a government informant.
Williams was charged in Los Angeles County on May 3, 1979. The complaint listed four counts of first-degree murder, further offenses including one count of kidnapping, and eight special circumstances, among them the multiple-murder special circumstance.
The trial opened on February 10, 1981, before a Los Angeles County jury sitting in Torrance. Williams was represented by Joseph Ingber. The defense case was an alibi: witnesses placed Williams elsewhere on the nights of both events. Counsel also attacked the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses, several of whom had received benefits or immunity.
Two features of the trial were disputed for the next quarter century. The first was the jury. The prosecution struck three Black prospective jurors, and the jury that tried Williams had no Black members. Williams's defense lawyer did not object at the time, which later limited what the courts could review. A human rights organization later noted that only about one percent of the jury pool in the area was Black.
The second was security. Williams appeared in court with a leg chain that was not visible to the jury and with his hands free. One juror saw him in handcuffs, with a coat over his hands, as he was moved to or from the courtroom. The federal courts later held that any error was harmless. They also found that a threat Williams mouthed toward the jurors was his own conduct and not an outside influence on them, and that the trial judge took reasonable steps to protect the verdict.
The prosecution's argument in front of the jury drew criticism in later years. The same organization reported that the prosecutor compared Williams, who sometimes appeared in court in shackles, to a Bengal tiger.
The jury returned its verdicts on March 13, 1981. It found Williams guilty of four counts of first-degree murder and of two further counts, and it found all eight special circumstances true.
A penalty phase followed. Neither side presented evidence. The defense put on no mitigating evidence, at Williams's own request, and the federal courts later found that counsel's decision not to call any was reasonable given the weakness of the available evidence, the risk of gang-related rebuttal, Williams's wish that no witnesses testify and a strategy of leaving the jury with lingering doubt about guilt. The jury returned a sentence of death, and judgment was entered on April 15, 1981.
A death sentence under the 1978 law was appealed automatically to the California Supreme Court. Williams filed a petition for habeas corpus on June 25, 1984, and the court consolidated it with the appeal. On April 11, 1988, it affirmed the conviction and the death sentence and denied the petition. Rehearing was denied, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.
Four more petitions followed in the state courts. A second, filed on January 9, 1989, was denied without a hearing. A third, filed on September 1, 1989, led to an evidentiary hearing and was denied on April 11, 1994. A fourth was denied on June 21, 1995, on the merits and on procedural grounds.
Williams filed his federal petition on January 23, 1989, and the court held it in abeyance while the state claims were exhausted. An amended petition was filed on November 13, 1995. On March 27, 1998, the federal district court in Los Angeles granted summary judgment to the state on 24 of the 28 claims. It heard evidence on May 27 and 28, 1998, on two claims, the shackling and the effectiveness of counsel, and on December 21, 1998, it denied the rest. Judgment was entered on December 23, 1998.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided the appeal on September 10, 2002, and filed an amended opinion on September 9, 2004. The panel affirmed the denial of the petition. It rejected the claims that counsel had been ineffective at either stage: he had reasonably chosen an alibi defense over a defense based on mental state, and his investigation for the penalty phase was sufficient. It rejected the claim that Williams had been tried while not competent, giving weight to trial counsel's testimony that he was competent and little weight to later expert declarations. It found that the prosecution had not been shown to have coerced a witness or concealed an agreement with another, and it treated the jury-selection claim as not meeting the threshold for review. It vacated a separate ruling on a motion made in the district court in 1999, because that court had no jurisdiction to rule on it while the appeal was pending.
The panel added a remark that was repeated often in the clemency campaign. It noted Williams's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 and his work against gang violence, and it said that these accomplishments might matter to a gubernatorial decision, though the federal courts could not weigh them in a habeas review. The court wrote that his "good works and accomplishments since incarceration may make him a worthy candidate" for clemency.
His lawyers asked the full court to rehear the case, arguing that the prosecution had unlawfully removed all the Black prospective jurors. In February 2005 the Ninth Circuit declined, without comment from the majority. Judge Johnnie Rawlinson and eight other judges wrote or joined an opinion favoring rehearing, on the ground that his counsel should have objected to the removals. His attorney said he would take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Williams spent about 24 years on death row in California. He spent part of that time in solitary confinement, and his record was exemplary after he left it. From the mid-1990s he worked with Barbara Becnel, a writer, on books for children and teenagers about gangs and prison: Redemption and a gang series for young readers in 1996, Life in Prison in 1998 and Blue Rage, Black Redemption in 2005. For about ten years the two also worked to broker truces between gangs and to reach young people online. Supporters said he renounced gang life and his work had a measurable effect: when a television film about his life, Redemption, with Jamie Foxx in the lead, was shown in 2004, he received more than 40,000 emails, many from young gang members. A human rights group credited the film with helping to bring about a 2004 agreement between Crips and Bloods members in Newark, New Jersey, at a gathering of about 300.
A member of the Swiss Parliament nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. Becnel later said he was nominated five times for the Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He also received a 2005 presidential service award from the United States.
Prosecutors and victims' advocates in Los Angeles questioned the sincerity of the change. They said that he never admitted the crimes, that he refused to inform on other members of the gang, and that the gang he co-founded had been linked to hundreds of deaths. Williams said he regretted founding it. He maintained that he was innocent of the four murders.
By the fall of 2005 an execution date had been set for December 13, and the question moved to the governor. In California the governor may commute a death sentence to life without parole, and Schwarzenegger had refused to do so for the first two condemned men who had asked him. The last California governor to grant clemency in a death case was Ronald Reagan, in 1967.
Williams's supporters included Desmond Tutu, Jesse Jackson, Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg, Sister Helen Prejean and the president of the NAACP. Petitions from more than 50,000 people were presented. On November 30, 2005, a human rights organization wrote to the governor asking for clemency, arguing that his rehabilitation showed the value of reform and that the death penalty was cruel and unusual. Williams's lawyers met the governor on December 8.
The governor's decision came on the afternoon of Monday, December 12, 2005, in a five-page statement. Schwarzenegger said he could find no justification for granting clemency and that the facts did not justify overturning the verdict of the jury or the decisions of the courts. He wrote that "it is impossible to separate Williams' claim of innocence from his claim of redemption," that "cumulatively, the evidence demonstrating Williams is guilty of these murders is strong and compelling," and that "without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption." He also said Williams had never apologized or shown remorse for his victims.
The courts had already refused to intervene. On Sunday, December 11, the California Supreme Court denied a stay of execution. On the Monday, the Ninth Circuit rejected Williams's request for permission to file a second or successive petition, his fifth, a 132-page filing with nine claims. In that order, Williams v. Ornoski, a panel of Judges Hug, Nelson and Gould held that the claims already raised had to be dismissed and that, for the rest, Williams had not made the required showing of due diligence and of clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence. The petition had argued that he should have been allowed to present evidence that someone else caused one of the deaths and that unreliable evidence tied him to the others. The U.S. Supreme Court then refused to intervene without comment.
After the clemency decision, his lawyers asked the governor for a stay based on three new witnesses with information in his favor. The governor refused. A later petition cited a fourth witness who said other inmates had tried to recruit him to frame Williams. The governor refused that too.
Williams was executed in California on December 13, 2005. He was 51. He was the 12th person executed in California since the death penalty was reinstated, and his execution came a little over a week after the 1,000th execution in the United States since capital punishment returned in 1976. A leading human rights organization called it "a travesty of justice" and "yet another sad milestone." The president of the California NAACP described the governor's decision as a serious blow to efforts to fight gangs.
California's present death penalty law dates from 1978. Under it a death sentence is appealed automatically to the California Supreme Court, as Williams's was. His jury found eight special circumstances, including multiple murder.
After the state courts, a prisoner may ask the federal courts for habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. section 2254. A second or successive federal petition needs the permission of the court of appeals under section 2244(b): claims already raised are dismissed, and new claims must show due diligence and clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence. That was the test Williams failed on December 12, 2005.
Clemency is a separate route. No rules guide a California governor in deciding a death-penalty clemency petition, and the federal courts could not weigh a prisoner's good works in reviewing a habeas petition. The governor could have commuted the sentence to life without parole.
Williams denied the four murders throughout. He said the witnesses who linked him to the events were informants and accomplices who had received lighter sentences, immunity or release in exchange for their testimony, and that his confessions to them were fabricated. A human rights organization reported concerns on the same grounds. The courts rejected these claims on review, and Governor Schwarzenegger found the evidence of guilt "strong and compelling."
His lawyers also argued that the trial was unfair because the prosecution had not disclosed the criminal record of a key witness, and that the jury was chosen in a way that excluded Black citizens. The California Supreme Court and the federal courts rejected the first claim. On the second, nine judges of the Ninth Circuit wished to rehear the case, but the court did not.
In his last petition he argued that someone else had caused one of the deaths and that the evidence connecting him to the others was unreliable. The Ninth Circuit found that he had not shown clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence.
The sincerity of his change is the other disputed point. Supporters said it was shown by the books, the truces and the nominations; prosecutors said it could not be shown while he denied the crimes. The governor sided with the prosecutors.
December 29, 1953: Born in New Orleans, Louisiana.
1959: Moves with his mother to South Central Los Angeles.
1971: Co-founds the gang that becomes the Crips.
On or about February 27, 1979: Albert Owens, 26, dies in Whittier.
March 11, 1979: Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang and Yu-Chin Yang Lin die in Los Angeles.
May 3, 1979: Williams is charged with four counts of first-degree murder, further counts and eight special circumstances.
February 10, 1981: Trial opens in Los Angeles County.
March 13, 1981: Jury finds him guilty and finds all eight special circumstances true.
April 15, 1981: Death sentence entered.
April 11, 1988: California Supreme Court affirms the conviction and sentence.
June 21, 1995: Fourth state habeas petition denied.
December 23, 1998: Federal district court enters judgment denying habeas relief.
September 10, 2002: Ninth Circuit affirms; amended opinion September 9, 2004.
February 2005: Ninth Circuit declines rehearing.
December 12, 2005: Governor refuses clemency; the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court refuse to intervene.
December 13, 2005: Executed in California.