Saving Tookie

Before Jamie Foxx played Ray Charles in “Ray,” he played Stan “Tookie” Williams in “Redemption: The Stan ‘Tookie’ Williams Story.” On Tuesday, Tookie Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection in California’s San Quentin State Prison.

The fact that Tookie Williams’ story made its way to the silver screen should come as no surprise; indeed, it was ripe for the pickin’. The short, short version? In 1971, he co-founded the Los Angeles Crips, the notorious street gang that would sweep the nation throughout the eighties and nineties. In ’81, he was convicted of murdering four people during two robberies and was sentenced to death. Over the past 24 years, he has written nine children’s books from death row, urging kids to stay out of gangs. He has written a memoir about his incarceration and rehabilitation, directed toward at-risk high school students and prisoners. He almost-single-handedly orchestrated the truce between the Bloods and Crips. He has been nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

On Tuesday—barring a grant of clemency from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—Stan “Tookie” Williams will die. (That, in itself, has the makings of a sequel, huh?) If clemency is granted, Williams’ sentence will be commuted—most likely, to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

I need to make something clear. This is not a manifesto. I am not coming out against the death penalty. I have not signed any petitions to save this man from the needle. But I probably should.

None of the physical evidence from Williams’ 1981 trial points to his guilt. There were fingerprints at both crime scenes. None belonged to Tookie. There was a bloody boot print found near one of the victims. It was not Tookie’s. The shotgun tied to the killings was found under the bed of a married couple under investigation for a separate murder. It was not Tookie’s.

To this day, Tookie Williams admits that he has done a lot of wrong in his life. In an apology posted on his website, www.tookie.com, he writes, “I pray that one day my apology will be accepted. I also pray that one day your suffering, caused by gang violence, will soon come to an end as more gang members wake up and stop hurting themselves and others. I vow to spend the rest of my life working on solutions.” However, he insists that he is innocent for the crimes that landed him on death row.

Jamie Foxx, who played Tookie in “Redemption,” and Snoop Dogg, a Crip member, have both gotten involved in the movement to save Williams’ life. The Archbishop Desmond Tutu was among four Nobel laureates that signed a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger asking for clemency. Laurence Fishburne, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Tim Robbins, and Bonnie Raitt are also reported to have signed it.

For good or ill, Stan Williams has become the new Mumia Abu-Jamal, a face to put on the fight against capital punishment. But time is running out for Williams. If you’d like to know more about Tookie Williams or would like to voice your opinion on his fate, visit www.tookie.com or www.savetookie.org.

-From Pulse
December 8, 2005