Will the execution of Crips founder be a mistake?

You nimrods can't possibly be as dense as you are appearing here. You post a response to Williams' plea for clemency that was compiled and written by those very people who are deeply invested in seeing him executed - the DA's office. And you act as if this is some kind of objective dissertation on the facts about this case.

Why should any reasonable person try to talk to you about this? You demonstrate very painfully clearly how dangerous is contempt before investigation.

Snood:

I'm not a "nimrod." I won't ignore the abundance of evidence that proved Williams's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I don't have my head buried in the sand like you. You haven't demonstrated that you're a "reasonable person" because you're the one who refuses to open his eyes and see the facts. I'm not joining your attempts to glorify this monster.

Debra_Law
No amount of evidence will convince snood that Tookie was not framed and railroaded. I suppose he also believes that OJ was an innocent victim of police corruption.

Nimrod is a nice word for you. You entered this thread with a made-up mind about what should happen to Williams, and have done nothing but try to support your prejudgement. Williams is not OJ, and that was a consistently ignorant statement.

I have not finished reading the whole link, but, so far, Snood is correct in that these are the people with a stake in proving themselves right. I will want to see how the defense lawyers came by their statements also, if possible.

(just for the record, its Sliwa...)

You keep telling everybody that they don't know what the facts are, yet I don't see you presenting and hard facts either.

Snood
Rather than having the thread locked I will not use the "nice word" I have for you. Or what I think that drives you. However, you can and no doubt will continue to believe that Tookie is innocent and all the law enforcement agencies, courts and juries were wrong and you in your infinite wisdom are correct. no sense continuing the discussion. It is now in the hands of Arnold .

I've never once in this thread said I think he's innocent. I simply don't know. All I've been doing is expressing my opinion that the man should be spared, because it makes more sense than killing him.

As for some relevant "Facts":


The main evidence against Stan was the testimony of jailhouse informants who claimed that he had confessed to them. All of these "witnesses" were facing serious felony charges and had strong motivations to make a deal with the police to reduce their own sentences. In its 2002 ruling, the Ninth Circuit admitted that these informants had "less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie in order to obtain leniency from the state in either charging or sentencing."

Since the original trial, another prisoner has come forward to say that he witnessed one of the informants being given the file on Stan's case by members of the Sheriff's Department so that he could learn details about the murders.

None of the physical evidence found at the two crime scenes, including fingerprints and a boot print, matched Stan. A witnesses description of a person seen leaving the scene of one of the crimes did not fit him either. A shotgun shell supposedly matched a weapon he had bought several years earlier, but that gun was in the possession of a couple that was also facing serious felony charges. After they claimed that Stan had confessed to them, however, the investigation against them was dropped.

To get the charges to stick, the prosecutor in the case, Robert Martin, used blatant racism. He often referred to Williams as an "animal" and his neighborhood as "the jungle". The trial was moved from Los Angeles to Torrance, a predominantly white, highly conservative area.
Martin was later censured twice by the California Supreme Court for his racist practices, which led to death sentences in two of the cases he prosecuted being overturned. The ACLU, the NAACP, the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund and numerous other groups, filed an amicus brief on Stan's behalf, because of Martin's racist practices.


Besides all this, it just makes no sense to kill someone who can help so many people if kept alive in prison. His death would amount to no more than revenge. If you nimrods want to kill him, why don't you just admit that, instead of trying to come off like you're repreesenting some high cause.

Then it's troubling to read this (from an article a couple of pages ago):



That seems to contradict his denials of guilt.

Another disturbing comment is one he made to Rita Cosby on MSNBC Monday night. He said he was convicted by an "all-white" jury. From facts I've read, that's not true, so I have to wonder why he'd lie about it.

I don't understand how anyone can assert there is no "credible evidence" that Tookie committed those murders. A review of L.A. DA Steve Cooley's reply to Tookie's request for clemancy should assuage those concerns.

Besides the issue of Williams' guilt or innocence, to me there are two related, but different issues here.
One - I don't believe we should continue to practice the death penalty.

The death penalty is practiced in America in a way that can statistically be shown to be biased. Killing someone white is far more likely to land a person on death row than murdering blacks. While blacks were nearly 47% of this nation's homicide victims from 1976 (the year the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty) to 2002, 80% of the victims of the people on death row were white, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/

All but 25 of the 570 whites executed through Oct. 1 had white victims ?- as did 62% of the blacks who were put to death. This suggests that the criminal justice system places a higher value on the lives of white capital crime victims than those of blacks. That's an inequitable and unjust application of the death penalty.

"If you're going to support the death penalty, then you have to be as supportive of its equitable and just application." It wasn't some bleeding heart tree-hugger who said that. It was Richard Land, chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commision, a man who has been quoted as saying he would volunteer to be the one who delivered the lethal injection to John Couey, a man who raped and killed a nine-year-old. Land has pointed out that the poor and people of color are more likely to be executed in this country.

The second issue, IMO, is that we will do harm and no good by killing Stan Williams. There is no good reason not to let this man continue his work in prison. If he can help some kids navigate their way clear of gangs, to me, that's reason enough.

I understand you are against the death penalty, snood ... and of course I am in favor of it. But you make a point about the percentage of death penalty case victims that are white as disproportionate to other races. I'm not here to question those statistics, but question the import of those statistics vis a vis the issue of the death penalty.

I completely agree that the justice system ought to be color blind, and there should not be a higher value placed on white capital crime victims over black victims. We have common ground there. The key question for the prosecutor ought to be whether the facts and circumstances of the crime warrant seeking the death penalty, and that should not be based on the color of the victim.

But in your view, how does the race of the victim impact the inmate on death row? Assuming the crime is such that the death penalty is available under the law ... why do you think the fact that the victim is probably white support your argument that the death penalty is not an appropriate sanction?

You say it's an "inequitable and unjust application of the death penalty." But that only makes sense to me if you are in favor of the death penalty. After all, you appear to be suggesting that there ought to be twice as many inmates on death row -- all those who killed black victims and should have received the death penalty. I agree with you ... but again, that doesn't offer strong support for your argument against the death penalty.

snood wrote:



Exactly.

I oppose the death penalty on several grounds, not the least of which is that it is applied inequitably.

The stats show that killing a white person is more likely to get you executed than killing a black person - that supports my opposition on the grounds of inequitable application. Clear it up at all?

Not at all.

What don't you understnad? The system is biased - that's one of the reasons I oppose the death penalty.

Biased against the victims?

No, Ticoyama.

The odds are that a black man will be punished more harshly than a white man, and a poor man more harshly than a rich one.

The odds are that one will be punished more harshly for murdering a white man than for murdering a black man.

This demonstrates to me that the system values white life above black life.

And if you want to continue to act as if that is somehow an elusive point to you, I guess I can play along - but only a little while.

Women can't get executed at all, it seems.