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Opinion

Clemency a gift, not a reparation

By Dante Eglin
Opinion columnist

On Dec. 13, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 51, is scheduled to be executed by the state of California. Williams is a convicted murderer and is known as a co-founder of one of the United States' most infamous street gangs, the Crips. Since his incarceration, Williams has become recognized for a completely different set of reasons: becoming a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated children's author, as well as a highly respected advocate against gang violence. 

Williams' fate now lies in the hands of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has the authority to commute the death sentence. On Thursday, Schwarzenegger will meet with Williams' lawyers to discuss their claims for executive clemency. Schwarzenegger, who has not spared the life of any inmate on death row since being elected, has not said whether a clemency hearing would be scheduled.

Williams' path has taken him from forming the Crips at the age of 17 with close friend Raymond Washington in the streets of Los Angeles to becoming a vocal and influential activist from behind the bars of his 9-by-5-foot prison cell in San Quentin, Calif. In 1979, Williams was arrested in connection with four murders and was later convicted of killing a convenience store clerk and robbing and killing a Taiwanese motel owner along with his wife and daughter. He was sentenced in 1981 to four death sentences.

Williams has maintained his innocence and insists he received an unfair trial, in part, because of questionable jury selection methods, media bias and lack of convicting evidence. In an interview Tuesday on PBS Tonight, Williams spoke to host Tavis Smiley via telephone about the fundamentals of his trial.

"The fact of the matter is there was not a shred of tangible evidence to begin with, no fingerprints, the crime scene boot prints did not match my boots, no eyewitnesses, the shotgun shells that were fired continuously at each crime scene didn't match the shotgun I owned," Williams said. "I mean, all the evidence was predicated on hearsay or circumstantial evidence. That's the key."

In 1993, Williams began to steer his life down a completely new course when he agreed to record a videotaped message from death row urging a truce to end the deadly gang wars between the Crips and rival gang the Bloods. The videotape was played during a peace summit attended by more than 400 gang members, helping to end what had been one of the deadliest and lengthiest gang rivalries that stretched from coast to coast.

Williams has received numerous Nobel Prize nominations and has also gained a rapidly growing sect of celebrity supporters, including actor Jamie Foxx, who played Williams in the television movie Redemption: The Stan "Tookie" Williams Story; actor-activist Mike Farrell; and Los Angeles rapper Snoop Dogg, who is scheduled to appear at a rally Saturday outside the San Quentin prison unit.

"You kill that voice and you're killing a lot of hope for these kids," Snoop Dogg told the Agence France-Presse.

Among those who signed a petition requesting Schwarzenegger to grant clemency to Williams were Nobel laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Betty Williams and Jody Williams. Actors Jason Alexander, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Tim Robbins, Bonnie Raitt and Susan Sarandon also signed the letter, supporters of Williams said.

Hall of Fame NFL running back Jim Brown, who in 1988 founded the organization Amer-I-Can to help reform gang members and prevent turns to violent life, is a supporter of Williams' cause and respects his work. 

"To get to real change, you have to have systems in place," Brown said in an article published in the Nation of Islam's newspaper, The Final Call, which has also endorsed Williams' cause. "Then, you put a powerful voice with that system and you get the result. We have worked for years to put a system in place and have now joined forces with the powerful voice of Stanley Williams. Tookie is brilliant and has a fantastic spirit."

In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Williams revealed his thoughts and an insight into his persona as death looms near.

"I continue to live my life day by day, or shall I say, minute by minute, hour by hour, and day by day, as I have been doing since my redemption," Williams replied when asked what were his thoughts regarding the possibility of his execution.

"It has nothing to do with a cavalier attitude. It has nothing to do with machismo or manhood or some pseudo code of the streets, which I formerly used," Williams said. "It has to do with my faith in God and my redemption. That's why I can sit here and talk to you just as calmly or any of the other journalists who have crossed my path. I don't fear this type of stuff. I'm at peace."

The fact of the matter is that no matter how many gang members he can convert, children he can inspire or criminals he influences, the recent efforts of Williams cannot offer suffice contrition to the families and relatives of Albert Owens, Yen-Yi Yang, Tsai-Shen Yang and Ye-Chin Lin, the four victims Williams was charged with murdering. 

Whether he actually pulled the trigger of the gun that took the lives of the aforementioned victims is a different debate in its own right, but by being involved in some level with each killing and by the principle of guilt by association alone, he deserves to be punished for his actions.

In essence, the plight of Williams proves the misinterpretation of the basic tenet of clemency in modern government and society. An individual cannot earn or be owed clemency. In our legal and constitutional history, it has been proved in fact to be a gift of mercy and grace.

Writing in 1833, in the first case involving clemency to reach the Supreme Court, Justice John Marshall described clemency as "an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws," as explained by Austin Sarat, professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.

Sarat explains that roughly 20 years later, in Ex Parte Wells, Supreme Court Justice James M. Wayne noted the difference between the definition of a pardon in "common parlance" and in the law. In common parlance, a pardon may loosely be described as equaling "forgiveness, release, remission." In relation to law, however, Wayne wrote, "It has different meanings, which were as well understood when the Constitution was made as any other legal word in the Constitution now is." 

He noted that without clemency, our system "would be most imperfect and deficient in its political morality, and in that attribute of deity whose judgments are always tempered with mercy."

Gov. Schwarzenegger's interpretation of clemency -- as meant only to correct misdeeds of justice -- is inherently wrong, as it fails to fall in accordance with our legal and constitutional conventions. The true query is not whether Williams has earned or deserves clemency; but it is if the governmental leaders will indeed recognize Williams' efforts and his commitment to annul the very problems and issues of which he himself helped kindle more than 25 years ago.

Eglin, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at dante.eglin@gmail.com.