Clemency for Tookie?

SFGate.com

San Francisco Chronicle
SOUTH CENTRAL'S HOPE: CLEMENCY FOR WILLIAMS
Condemned killer helped invent the L.A. gang lifestyle, but many in this impoverished area don't want to see him die

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, December 10, 2005


Los Angeles -- In the heart of South Central Los Angeles, a place so immersed in the gang lifestyle that even the schools are affiliated with either the Crips or the Bloods, Shiloh Badili paints.

The 52-year-old muralist, like many others in this impoverished flatland, knows what it is like to mourn a relative killed by what he calls "the meanness."

He also knows, as everybody here knows, that Stanley Tookie Williams, the man scheduled to be executed Tuesday morning at San Quentin State Prison, played a pivotal role in plunging the neighborhood down that dark path when he started the Crips gang 35 years ago.

Badili, nevertheless, believes that Williams' life should be spared. He believes it, he said, for the same reason he scrapes together his pennies to purchase paint and bathe vacant storefronts and buildings with colorful images.

"Just like that mural is reawakening the neighborhood, turning something bad into something good, Tookie is using his incarceration time that usually makes people miserable to make life better for others," Badili said. "Commuting his sentence could be the good thing that allows good to blossom here in South Central."

Badili speaks, generally, for many people in South Central Los Angeles, where the plight of Williams is on everybody's mind. An informal street-corner survey by The Chronicle found people sympathetic to the families of Williams' victims but no one favoring his execution. "Spare Tookie" is the refrain on the streets and in the liquor stores, beauty salons and churches.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he will issue a decision on clemency by Monday.

The Williams case has become a cause, like Rodney King, whose beating by police in 1992 sparked widespread riots in Los Angeles. The people are at once full of hope and afraid that if Williams is executed, the same thing will happen in South Central that happened in the King case.

"If they kill him, there is going to be a riot," said hair stylist Shelton Carter, 43, as he stood at the checkout counter of the West-Vern Liquor & Deli store in an area known as the "Rolling 40s" or "40 Crips," gang lingo that has been adopted even by the police. "I know that he was wrong, but he wrote books and has taken up the cause of stopping gang violence. How is he going to do that if he is dead?"

Williams, convicted of murdering four people in 1979, was widely feared inside and outside prison until he renounced gangs. Over the past decade, he crusaded against gangs, wrote eight children's books opposing the gang life, brokered truces between rival groups and was nominated for several literary awards.

He denies he committed the murders, and many people in his former stomping grounds believe him. There is, and has been at least since Rodney King, rampant suspicion of law enforcement and the justice system in South Central, where police and persecution are considered virtual synonyms.

His case is personal even for residents of his old neighborhood who believe he is guilty, because they have seen the same poverty, lack of education and opportunity that he did. Their support for clemency is, they say, a belief in the redemptive power, and value, of penance, which they believe should count for something.

Brenda White, a 49-year-old employee at a fashionable clothing store at the corner of West Vernon and South Western avenues near Williams' childhood home, said she believes that people can change, that while some mistakes cannot be forgiven, all lives can be redeemed.

"If they put prisoners in there and they reform, that's what it is all about," said White, who knew Williams when she was young and thought he was a "nice" guy. "I believe in the death penalty, but people who change their lives for the better should get a second chance."

White said she struggles every day trying to keep her 15-year-old son out of gangs. She gets down on her knees and prays when he leaves for school.

"I am conflicted in a way because Tookie should never have gotten the gangs started in the first place," she said. "But what he says now might make a difference -- it might save other lives. That should play a part in the clemency decision, or else what sense is there in it?"

There are no illusions in South Central about how much of a problem gangs are in Los Angeles. The Crips, who outnumber the Bloods by almost 2 to 1, have as many as 30,000 members, compared to 2,000 at most during Williams' time, and the two gangs have spread to many other cities, according to gang experts.

There are so many different Crips offshoots that the various groups have split the city into what they call "sets," regions that they control. Drug dealing is rampant, drive-by shootings are common and citizens, business owners and even politicians are targets of intimidation.

The Crips gang formed as a kind of community watchdog group in 1971 after the demise of the Black Panthers. Originally called "Avenue of the Crib," the name was shortened to Cribs and later Crips after it was repeatedly mispronounced, according to Donald Bakeer, the author of "South Central LA Crips," the definitive book on gang life between 1971 and 1986.

Williams founded the "West Side Crips" in South Central, the name an indication that their territory was west of the Harbor Freeway. A man named Raymond Washington founded the "East Side Crips," Bakeer said. He was shot dead in 1979.

The black student union at UCLA wrote a constitution for the Crips in the 1970s, defining the name as meaning "Community Revolution in Progress." The revolution that occurred was a great deal more devastating to the community than the students ever dreamed, and unfortunately, Bakeer said, it is still in progress.

"They were always violent, and Tookie had his fingerprints on lots of murders," said Bakeer, who was a teacher at Williams' former high school. "But the real holocaust is the thousands who have been killed by Crips in South Central L.A. and who are still being killed. As a schoolteacher, I've known over 100 people who've been killed by Crips. It is a constant death rate."

Still, Bakeer said, he supports clemency, not because he feels anything for Williams personally but because of the service he can be to young people from behind bars.

"He discovered what I discovered from teaching in the schools in South Central that the solution is literacy," Bakeer said. "When boys can't read, they have no chance. That's why I want Tookie to stay alive. He is the only one writing to this segment of African American society."

Former Crips member Tommie "T-top" Rivers spent 10 years in prison for gang-related crimes before realizing how ruinous the lifestyle was for him and the community. At 36, he now runs a nonprofit dedicated to helping gang members change their ways. He believes the fight against the gang lifestyle can only be won if former gang members are on the front lines.

"It is imperative to stop it, and it can be stopped," Rivers said. "Tookie is a vital part of that effort. Who better to help stop it than the person who started it? I'm a living example of how second chances can work."

What is at stake, said the Rev. Lewis Logan, pastor at Bethel AME church in the middle of gang territory, is hope for the many people who have taken wrong turns in life.

"You have an issue where hopelessness drives people to destroy themselves and what's around them," said Logan, who has been vigorously campaigning for clemency. "Tookie is seen in this community as a victim of the system, and now it can be argued he has turned his life around. That is the human experience. Everybody, in their own way, goes through that process of redemption. That's why the people can relate to him."

Badili said he understands how people, especially relatives of the victims Williams was convicted of killing, would want revenge.

"I feel empathy for the family members because I know what it feels like to have a loved one taken from you," he said. "But if we put Tookie to death, it would be saying to people that, no matter how good you become in prison, it doesn't matter. You are still going to die."
Defending Williams

Shiloh Badili, painter and muralist

"Tookie is using his incarceration time that usually makes people miserable to make life better for others. Commuting his sentence could be the good thing that allows good to blossom here in South Central."

The Rev. Lewis Logan, who has campaigned for clemency for Williams

"Tookie is seen in this community as a victim of the system, and now it can be argued he has turned his life around. … Everybody goes through that process of redemption. That's why the people can relate to him."

E-mail Peter Fimrite at [email protected].