Tookie death shows racism rife in America
13/12/2005

BLACK AMERICA is in mourning today after Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, the reformed ex-gang leader, was executed earlier today.

Stanley 'Tookie' Williams: executed this morning. His case has divided America.

The 51-year-old died by lethal injection in San Quentin prison, California, after the state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected all appeals for clemency.

Hollywood Oscar winner Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in the film 'Redemption', was one of many celebrities who joined political leaders calling for Mr Williams to be spared death.

In one of the most controversial death controversial executions in modern US history the Republican governor Mr Schwarzenegger rejected last-minute appeals.

The former Hollywood actors' ruling dismayed anti death penalty campaigners and most African-Americans. The NAACP called the refusal to commute Mr Williams sentence to life imprisonment without parole "a political decision."

Around two-thousand people held pro and anti vigils outside the prison as Mr Williams was executed at 8am British-time today. Rev'd Jesse Jackson joined death penalty opponents marching to the prison across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Mr Williams founded the notorious Crips gang in Los Angeles in 1971. While on death row he wrote nine childrens books educating young people to avoid gangs and crime. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times.

Rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip, has campaigned for Mr Williams life to be spared.

Mr Williams was condemned to death in 1981 for gunning down convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven store and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and the couple's daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned.

Williams claimed he was innocent and was set up by police. No physical evidence connected Mr Williams with these crimes. A gun claimed to have been used by Mr Williams was later shown to belong to a husband and wife crime team who escaped jail.

Just three hours before Mr Williams was scheduled to die, his lawyers sent Mr Schwarzenegger a second request for a stay, claiming a fourth witness - who could help prove his innocence - had come forward. The governor denied that request as well.

Former inmate Gordon Bradbury Von Ellmerman, who claimed Mr Williams confessed the crimes, now says he was fed key information by law enforcement officers in an attempt to frame Mr Williams.