www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/07/WILLIAMS.TMP
Williams' appeal denied (10/12/05) If Stanley Tookie Williams is executed on Tuesday shortly after midnight for four 1979 murders, his legions of supporters will say the state has killed an innocent man. If Williams is spared, Los Angeles County prosecutors and the relatives o f the dead will say a cold-blooded killer was granted the mercy that he never gave the victims. The record of Williams' case leaves enough room for each side to argue it s position of guilt or innocence with little chance of satisfying the ot her side's objections. Williams has maintained his innocence since the 1981 trial that sent him to death row, but he has been unable to produce the type of evidence tha t has led to exonerations in other cases -- DNA, a rock-solid alibi, rec anting witnesses or a third-party confession. Prosecutors maintain that the evidence against him was overwhelming. But the two federal courts that reviewed Williams' case did not appear to be overwhelmed, even though they upheld his convictions and death sentence . The prosecution's case was based on circumstantial evidence and the testi mony of witnesses "whose credibility was highly suspect,'' US District Judge Stephen Wilson wrote in 1998. Despite their reservations, neither Wilson nor the appeals court found an y reason to set aside the jury verdict in Williams' trial. Their rulings , and the verdict they reaffirmed, pose a formidable barrier to Williams ' effort to convince the public in general, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegg er in particular, that he is innocent. Williams' hopes of winning clemency from Schwarzenegger, who will hold a private hearing on the matter Thursday, could depend on his lawyers' abi lity to raise at least lingering doubts about his guilt. The worldwide c ampaign to save Williams' life has stressed his redemption as the Crips gang founder who became an anti-gang crusader, author of anti-violence b ooks for youths and broker of gangland truces. But clemency cases in other states suggest that only a credible claim of innocence has a chance of swaying a governor. "It's about the only ground in which governors grant clemency in the mode rn period,'' said Austin Sarat, professor law and politics at Amherst Co llege in Massachusetts and author of "Mercy on Trial,'' a book about cle mency. In recent decades, he said, "I know of no case in which a death row inmat e has been spared (solely) on the basis of post-conviction rehabilitatio n'' The witnesses The case against Williams depends, ultimately, on the credibility of pros ecution witnesses whom the jury found believable in spite of their unsav ory backgrounds. With no evidence that demonstrates his innocence, Williams and his suppor ters are left to argue that he was framed by witnesses who lied in excha nge for leniency and railroaded by a prosecutor who engaged in racist ta ctics. Williams was convicted of murdering Albert Lee Owens, 26, a clerk at a 7- Eleven in Whittier (Los Angeles County), who was ordered to lie on the f loor and then shot in the back during a $120 robbery on Feb. H e was also convicted of murdering Yen-I Yang, 76, and Tsai-Shai Yang, 63 , owners of the Brookhaven Motel in Los Angeles, and their daughter, Yee -Chen Lin, 43, all shot to death during a $100 robbery on March 11, 1979 . No fingerprints, blood or clothing at either crime scene connected Willia ms to the shootings. The main physical evidence against him was a shell casing at the motel, matched to Williams' shotgun by a sheriff's expert whose testing methods have been derided as "junk science'' by an expert hired by Williams' current lawyers. Last week, the state Supreme Court r ejected a defense request for new tests of the gun. The chief eyewitness was Alfred Coward, who took part in the 7-Eleven rob bery and was given immunity from prosecution. He testified that Williams had led a group of four men into the store, forced Owens into a storage room at gunpoint, shot the clerk and later laughed about it, imitating the sounds Owens made as he died. Another of the robbers, Tony Sims, did not testify at Williams' trial but implicated him at Sims' own murder trial, which resulted in a life sent ence. Other prosecution witnesses said Williams had confessed to one or both se ts of murders. Samuel Coleman, who was arrested along with Williams and was given immunity from prosecution, testified that Williams had admitte d to the motel killings. Williams' lawyers said that Coleman was not all eged to have had any connection with the killings and that it was never clear why he needed immunity. At a 1994 hearing, Coleman said police had beaten him and threatened to c harge him with murder unless he testified against Williams. However, fed eral courts found that his testimony had been voluntary and noted that h e had a lawyer at the time of the trial. Williams, who had no serious criminal record despite eight years as a lea der of the Crips, did not testify and told his lawyer not to present any witnesses at the penalty phase. At one point, the jury foreman told the judge that Williams was seen mouthing a threat to "get each and every o ne'' of the jurors who had convicted him. The defense Defense witnesses included three who said Williams was elsewhere at the t ime of the murders and one who said Oglesby was known for spreading fals e information in jail. Williams' claim of innocence, during and since th e trial, has focused on discrediting the prosecution witnesses. In a recent filing with the state Supreme Court that sought unsuccessfull y to reopen the case, Williams' lawyers said the Garretts both had crimi nal records, faced felony charges at the time of the trial and had been given money and leniency by prosecutors for their testimony. The lawyers described James Garrett as a "career criminal and police info rmant'' and accused prosecutors of concealing evidence that might have i mplicated him in the killing of a former crime partner and might have ma de him a logical suspect in the motel murders. Garrett, who died in 1996 , was given probation or light sentences for a series of post-1981 crime s, including two shootings, and "knew that he could continue to call in favors for the rest of his criminal career,'' Williams' lawyers said. Coward, who was not prosecuted for his role in the 7-Eleven murder, conti nued his life of crime and is now in a Canadian prison on a manslaughter conviction for beating a man to death during a 1999 robbery, Williams' lawyers said. They also said Los Angeles prosecutors had arranged for the appointment o f a lawyer for Coleman who would assure his testimony against Williams - - a claim disputed by prosecutors, who said the lawyer was independent a nd well respected. Williams and his backers also say the trial was infused with racism. Depu ty District Attorney Robert Martin removed three African Americans from the jury, but the racial composition of the jury remains in dispute -- i n particular, the race of an apparently dark-skinned juror of Filipino d escent who also might have been black. Nine judges on the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals -- four short of t he necessary majority -- said in February that Williams should get a new hearing on the juror removals. The federal appeals court said both points were legally irrelevant to the fairness of Williams' trial. In the end, Williams and his lawyers were unable to find a way to raise d oubts about his guilt before the courts, which instead focused on such l egal issues as jury selection, suppression of evidence and the competenc e of the defense lawyer. Now that clemency is his last hope, Williams' "claim of innocence may be hurting him'' by making it impossible for him to express remorse for the four murders, said UC Berkeley Law Professor Franklin Zimring, an exper t on clemency. He told The Chronicl e in an interview Thursday, "It is absurd for a person to apologize for something he didn't do.
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