"Evidence could not be traced to Stanley Williams"

Evidence points to frame-up in Tookie Williams

Excerpts:

Was he truly proven "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt"? A careful reading of Attorney Verna Wefald’s 88-page appeal to the California Supreme Court to reopen the case strongly suggests that Tookie was framed and railroaded in a trial riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, lack of physical evidence and false stories spun by a parade of informers trying to save their own necks.

As a founder of the Crips gang, he was assumed to be guilty before he was even charged with four murders. He was "The Black Man Rampant," "The Black Bogeyman" and "The Bigger Thomas of South Central Los Angeles." He was convicted by his notoriety, not by the evidence.

According to Atty. Wefald and federal courts that reviewed Williams' case, Williams' 1981 trial for the murder of Albert Owens, a convenience store clerk in Whittier, and Los Angeles motel owners Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shaic Yang and their daughter Yee Chen Lin, was based on flimsy circumstantial evidence; the fabricated testimony of five informants having "incentives to lie in order to obtain leniency from the state...." (according to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals); and the perjury of at least one police officer.

Physical evidence such as fingerprints and a bloody boot-print could not be traced to Stanley Williams.

Only one shotgun shell was found at the motel. It ostensibly came from a shotgun purchased legally five years before by Mr. Williams, but the gun itself was actually found under the bed of informants James Garrett and his wife Ester. The Browning shotgun shell was sold at only two local stores, one of which, a Big Five, had been robbed of guns and ammunition by Mr. Garrett the year before.

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2313.shtml

I guess it depends how you feel about the death penalty, eh?

and when you ask those with bloodlust -- and who say the "evidence is overwhelming" -- when you ask them what the evidence is (or even some of it), they don't know.

all i can think of tonight..is please someone do something to stop this from happening..it is so wrong..i guess all any of us can do at this point is pray for him....and i will...and am, but it is just so wrong.

I keep sending positive energy to him. Hoping someone will tell the truth. :cry: I read that others in jail with him from the crime said it was him and they got out on better sentences. So where are Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and them defending Williams? Falwell did Tucker so why not him? :cry: The death penalty should be banned from this country!

in other countries as long as it is possible to be executed in the USA. A form of most severe torture is placing someone on "death row" for an undetermined period of time.

:sarcasm:

admitted into evidence.

"Now, the ultimate humiliation is being required of Tookie Williams. Like the innocent women at the Salem witch trials, he is being told he should confess in order to save his own life, a Catch-22 if ever there was one. This he refuses to do. He says he will not compromise his dignity and integrity, the most powerful and precious forces in his life today."

in Salem has got to be one of the dumbest things ever committed to type.

If not, they wouldn't have been convicted!

After all, the judges and the townspeople all said the evidence against them was overwhelming...
:sarcasm:

". He says he will not compromise his dignity and integrity,"

Not much you can do to save a man who won't save himself.

In 1981, the year of the trial, the Crips were not yet famous. There were only a few of them, and the police has not yet taken notice of them. The street gangs, as we know them today, were not yet a problem. So being the founder of the Crips would not have mattered. He wasn't famous yet.

That shotgun, by serial number, was sold to Williams. The record of the sale, with his name and signature on it and the serial number of the shotgun was in the records of the store.

Tookie LIVED with the Garretts. So the shotgun was recovered from the place where Tookie stayed.

The forensics expert testified that the shell came from that shotgun to the exclusion of all others. Yes, forensics IS able to do that with shell casings.

of their crime partner James Gilbon.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/07/MNG60G468I1.DTL&hw=williams+evidence+death&sn=021&sc=150

A QUESTION OF EVIDENCE
Stanley Tookie Williams' best hope for clemency may depend more on raising doubt about his guilt than on his redemption


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 that has led to exonerations in other cases -- DNA, a rock-solid alibi, recanting 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 testimony of witnesses "whose credibility was highly suspect,'' U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson wrote in 1998. He noted that there were no eyewitnesses to the shotgun murders of three people at a Los Angeles motel and that the only testifying eyewitness to the killing of a convenience store clerk was "an accomplice who had a strong motive to lie.''

Four years later, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voiced similar qualms, saying the prosecution had relied on witnesses with "less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie" to win lenient treatment for their own crimes.

...

The witnesses

The case against Williams depends, ultimately, on the credibility of prosecution witnesses whom the jury found believable in spite of their unsavory backgrounds.

With no evidence that demonstrates his innocence, Williams and his supporters are left to argue that he was framed by witnesses who lied in exchange for leniency and railroaded by a prosecutor who engaged in racist tactics.

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 floor and then shot in the back during a $120 robbery on Feb. 27, 1979. He 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 Williams 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 rejected a defense request for new tests of the gun.

The chief eyewitness was Alfred Coward, who took part in the 7-Eleven robbery 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 sentence.

Other prosecution witnesses said Williams had confessed to one or both sets of murders. Samuel Coleman, who was arrested along with Williams and was given immunity from prosecution, testified that Williams had admitted to the motel killings. Williams' lawyers said that Coleman was not alleged 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 charge him with murder unless he testified against Williams. However, federal courts found that his testimony had been voluntary and noted that he had a lawyer at the time of the trial.

James and Ester Garrett, in whose home Williams regularly stayed, both quoted Williams as telling them, separately, that he had committed both sets of murders and had referred to the motel victims as "Buddhaheads.'' Another witness, jailhouse informant George Oglesby, also testified that Williams had admitted to the killings and said Williams had plotted a pretrial jailbreak in which Coward, the prospective prosecution witness, would be killed.

Williams, who had no serious criminal record despite eight years as a leader 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 one'' of the jurors who had convicted him.

The defense

Defense witnesses included three who said Williams was elsewhere at the time of the murders and one who said Oglesby was known for spreading false information in jail. Williams' claim of innocence, during and since the trial, has focused on discrediting the prosecution witnesses.

In a recent filing with the state Supreme Court that sought unsuccessfully to reopen the case, Williams' lawyers said the Garretts both had criminal 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 informant'' and accused prosecutors of concealing evidence that might have implicated him in the killing of a former crime partner and might have made 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 crimes, 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, continued 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 of a lawyer for Coleman who would assure his testimony against Williams -- a claim disputed by prosecutors, who said the lawyer was independent and well respected.

Williams and his backers also say the trial was infused with racism. Deputy District Attorney Robert Martin removed three African Americans from the jury, but the racial composition of the jury remains in dispute -- in particular, the race of an apparently dark-skinned juror of Filipino descent who also might have been black.

Nine judges on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- four short of the necessary majority -- said in February that Williams should get a new hearing on the juror removals.

Williams' lawyers also accused Martin of racism for telling jurors, in his closing argument, that seeing Williams in the courtroom was like seeing a "Bengal tiger in captivity in the zoo.'' Defense lawyers noted that the state Supreme Court had overturned two later death sentences in cases prosecuted by Martin because of questions about whether race had motivated his juror selections.

________

sure sounds like there are reasonable doubts to me

I suspect, that because of ideology, you have would not find Tookie guilty, no matter what the evidence.

I don't feel like reposting all the stuff that was against him, yet again.

I will simply note that previous DEMOCRATIC governors of CA denied him, as did the 9th circuit which is the most liberal federal court in the nation, and repeatedly so did the CA supreme court - also very liberal. For about 24 years his lawyers have had opportunity after opportunity to attack the initial trial. Yet it has stood up to all those challenges. You would be well advised to check out the actual evidence that has been often posted. Much of what you posted contains inaccuracies and misrepresentations.

Always blame the black man. And now people can happily write him off because he's now well known for his gang.

pronounced guilty? What am I missing?

Sounds to me like he was set up. If they have such proof he is guilty they would show it again. Run tests and everything. But people don't care about the truth anymore. Look at Iraq.

n/t

The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

SNIP

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act.

You're either with us or against us.

SNIP

http://www.chris-floyd.com/pinter/index.htm