11/30: National Day of Action for Tookie!

Are you kidding? This piece of shit founded a violent street gang that killed without giving it a moments thought. And you want to protect him from the death penalty? This is one of the few types of cases where I SUPPORT the death penalty ... He killed a man and his daughter while in the process of a robbery so there would be no witnesses. I suppose that next you'll call him a "political prisoner" like that other piece of shit, Cop-killer Wesley Cook. Let's see how you react when they rape your little girl and then murder her so she can't testify.

Read this paragraph again very carefully (emphasis added)

Tookie, who co-founded the Los Angeles Crips gang when he was 17 years old, turned his life around while on death row. He wrote nine children's books from his cell on San Quentin's death row about the harsh realities of gang life. He dedicated his life on death row to helping kids stay out of gangs. For his efforts, he was awarded a Presidential Call to Service Award earlier this year and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times.

Maybe you need to check the facts more carefully.

FWIW, anyone can nominate anybody for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Secondly, does writing kiddie books really get someone a pass for multiple, cold-blooded murders?

Charles Manson - I guess you know what you have to do.

Ditto, Sirhan Sirhan.

I for one, will be happy when he is dead -which I fully expect to happen.

Do you actually know anything about him, or is this your standard response?

To be honest, I have no sympathy for people who support the death penalty. Maybe if your own family or someone you love has lost someone -- then sure, I can sympathize even if I don't agree.

You sound like a callous, if not bloodthirsty, person -- much like the people who stand outside of San Quentin and turn what should be a time for mourning into a tailgate party. Shame.

Just so y'all know...

Right to submit proposals for the Nobel Peace Prize, based on the principle of competence and universality, shall by statute be enjoyed by:

1. Members of national assemblies and governments of states;

2. Members of international courts;

3. University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;

4. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;

5. Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;

6. Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1) and

7. Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

The Nobel Peace Prize may also be awarded to institutions and associations.

Prize-Awarder: The Norwegian Nobel Committee, Oslo

CALIFORNIA
Condemned murderer of 4 loses appeal of death sentence
He was nominated for Nobel Prize for his writings

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, February 3, 2005


* Printable Version
* Email This Article

Stanley "Tookie'' Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang, condemned murderer of four people and Nobel Prize nominee for his anti-gang writings from Death Row, lost a federal court appeal of his death sentence Wednesday and could face execution later this year.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' refusal to reconsider Williams' case drew an impassioned dissent from nine judges, who said the court should have ordered a new hearing into whether the prosecutor violated Williams' right to racially neutral jury selection by removing three African Americans from the jury that convicted him.

"If our judicial system is to inspire a sense of confidence among the populace, we must not, we cannot permit trials to proceed in the face of blatant, race-based jury selection practices,'' said Judge Johnnie Rawlinson, writing for the dissenters.

But the request for a new hearing before an 11-judge panel failed to gain a majority vote among the court's 24 active judges. Williams has only one appeal left, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wednesday's order left intact a September 2002 ruling by a three-judge appeals court panel that upheld Williams' murder convictions and death sentence. The panel rejected numerous defense arguments, including the claim of racism in jury selection, saying Williams' attorneys failed to show how many African Americans were in the jury pool or whether any had been seated as jurors.

In an unusual postscript, the panel said Williams' "good works and accomplishments since incarceration'' might be grounds for clemency from the governor.

Relatives of Williams' victims have objected to suggestions of clemency, noting that he has never apologized to them for the murders, which he denies committing.

Williams, 51, co-founded the Crips, one of the nation's most notorious street gangs, in South Central Los Angeles at age 16. He was sentenced to death for the execution-style murder of a Whittier convenience store clerk during a February 1979 robbery and the murders of the owners of a Los Angeles motel and their daughter during a robbery two weeks later.

After eight years in prison, Williams renounced gangs and wrote the first of nine books warning children against the gang life.

He was first nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 by a member of Switzerland's Parliament. Williams has been nominated for the same award four times since then, most recently by a group of professors this week, and has also been nominated four times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, said his co- author, Barbara Becnel.

Becnel, executive director of the Neighborhood House of North Richmond, said she was outraged by Wednesday's court action. "We are preparing to execute an innocent man,'' she said.

The dissenting judges focused on prosecutor Robert Martin's challenges to three African American prospective jurors in Williams' case and on two later state Supreme Court rulings overturning death sentences in cases prosecuted by Martin that raised issues of race in jury selection.

Civil rights groups, in a brief supporting Williams, have accused Martin of exploiting the racial issue by telling jurors that their view of the defendant in the courtroom was like seeing a "Bengal tiger in captivity in the zoo.''

Williams' trial attorney did not object to the jurors' removal, but the dissenting judges, led by Rawlinson, said the prosecutor's actions and record justified a new hearing on the fairness of jury selection.

Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, disagreed. He said the record showed nonracial reasons for the juror challenges: One juror was distracted by job responsibilities, another said she would hold the prosecution to a higher standard than the law required, and the third was a mental health professional.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko [at] sfchronicle.com.

Callous and bloodthirsty would be an apt description of "Tookie", not me.

I won't be in California to celebrate, but like I said, I'll be happy when he's dead.

No doubt his 'fatal' mistake will turn out to be failure to adopt a quasi-African/Muslim prisnon name a la Mumia Abu Jamal, and Assata Shakur.

>I'm not celebrating, but I'll be happy when he's dead

Honestly? I don't believe you. Judging by your previous posts as well as the one earlier in the thread, I think there's nothing more you would like to see yet another black man fry. Don't back off of what you said -- unless you want me to call you a coward as well.

Question though: do you think it's ever possible for people who have committed violent acts to redeem themselves?