Speech at Stanley Tookie Williams' Funeral
20 December 2005

When I learned that there was going to be a public viewing of Stanley Tookie Williams' casket for friends and the public to pay their respect, I couldn't help thinking about the tragic irony of it all. Williams had to be executed before he could be free to visit this church. I can only imagine how often he must have dreamed about the possibility of wandering out of prison during those long lonely years in jail.

But we must rejoice for him, for he is 'free at last', and no one can prevent him from being here - not even Arnold Schwarzenegger.

On November 21, I met Stanley Tookie Williams at the San Quintin State prison. The first San Quintin condemned unit was established in 1893. North Block was built in 1934, and houses all males sentenced to death in the state of California.

The original condemned unit was originally designed to house 68 condemned prisoners, but today San Quintin houses approximately 6,000 prisoners. Approximately 600 of those are on death row.

That morning the weather was beautiful. The sun was shining. A prison guard escorted me approximately 1,000 metres before we arrived at the death row unit.

I had expected to meet Williams behind a barrier of glass and a wire partition, as I had Karla Fay Tucker and Gary Graham in death row in Texas. Instead, I met him face-to-face. He was already inside a small cell with Barbara Becnel, his co-author and long-time supporter, and Jesse Jackson. Before I entered, Williams put his hand behind his back through a small aperture in the metal door for the guard to handcuff him.

Once I was inside, and the door was closed, his handcuffs were removed. He reached out to say hello. Williams was tall and muscular; it was visible that he had once been a body builder. He appeared calm and at peace with himself. I shook his hand and sat next to him.

I knew my time was limited, but I had so many questions. I told him I had recently listened to a debate about his case on National Public Radio (NPR) and felt very disturbed when his defender had to admit that he was not willing to apologise or express remorse for the murders for which he was convicted and condemned to death. I asked him why.

He answered in a calm and measured voice, "I am innocent. I did not commit the crimes for which I was sentenced to death. I cannot ask for forgiveness and express remorse for a murder I didn't commit, even if, by refusing to do so, I risk losing my life. I cannot lie in order to live."

Looking me straight in the eyes, he continued, "First and foremost, I am innocent. There was no tangible evidence that linked me to the crime. The evidence was circumstantial: hearsay from a discredited informant; a bloody footprint; an indentation from an army boot (the indentation did not match my boots) and no DNA no fingerprint that matched mine.

"At first, the ballistic expert declared that the shell didn't match my shotgun. The prosecutor, Robert Martin, told him to 'try again'. This time, the ballistic expert said 'it was similar'. At the hearing he said it 'was the same', they didn't use photomicrography to examine the shells. My lawyers are asking to have the shells examined with photomicrograph, to establish what the human eye cannot distinguish."

I asked him why he thought he was convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. "I had a nasty reputation," he said, "and my reputation was put on trial. I had co-founded the street gang 'The Crips', and had earned a bad reputation for being violent and beating people up. I was tried, convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury. The prosecutor, Robert Martin, dismissed three prospective black jurors, because he was seeking an all white jury. He is notorious for engaging in racial discrimination when composing a jury."

"In addition," he added, in a somewhat lower voice, "I had an incompetent legal counsel."

"I have apologised on many occasions for my crimes. I genuinely have tried to redeem myself." I asked him how.

"I have written nine books to bring young people away from a life of violence and street gangs. I educated myself and became an autodidact - as you can imagine, this place has little room for rehabilitation. It was up to me to change.

"For the first 8 to 9 years, I gave this place hell. I spent years in solitary confinement. My redemption came by virtue of my education: I reflected on my life and I developed a conscience. I worked with churches, school, communities, to warn kids about the pitfall of gangster life. I wrote a 'Peace Protocol'. It was use to broker a truce between rival gangs in New Jersey and other states."

By the time I met Williams, his case had receive widespread support among religious leaders, Nobel Prize winners, celebrities and international figures. His execution has reignited the debate over America's barbaric, medieval and outdated death penalty policy.

Stanley Tookie Wiilliams was not the first prisoner I have visited on death row. Indeed, distressed that he had only twenty-two days to live, I was reminded of my visits to Karla Fay Tucker and Gary Graham in Texas. Both Tucker and Graham had hoped to be granted clemency by the then-Governor, George W. Bush.

But they were both executed by lethal injection. In Gary Graham's case, people across the world believed he was innocent because he was convicted to death based on a sole eyewitness testimony.

Widespread opposition to Karla Fay Tucker's execution arose after her rehabilitation, religious conversion and her work on the 'Scare-straight' programme to help adolescent drug abusers. George W. Bush, like a modern Pontius Pilate, washed his hands of her - even going so far as to make a mocking remark about her in the media. The Board of Pardons has never recommended that a case be commuted on the basis of mercy or rehabilitation and has never spared a death row prisoner from execution by lethal injection.

Stanley Tookie Williams' life depended on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governor had the authority to grant a pardon if he believed Stanley Tookie Williams was innocent, or to grant clemency and, commute his death sentence to life imprisonment without parole, if he believed that Williams was rehabilitated, no longer presented a threat to society and had showed remorse for the crimes for which he was sentenced to death.

In addition, the Governor could have granted a reprieve to allow William's lawyers to present a discovery motion to "seek evidence that should have been disclosed at the time of his trial but was suppressed and continues to be suppressed by the prosecution".

Williams' enlightening books have touched thousands of troubled youths and many have since turned away from gang violence. To those transformed by Williams’ writings, he has come to represent a symbol of hope and purpose.

For his good works, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recommended that Mr. Williams would make a "worthy candidate" for an act of executive clemency.

Williams was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 2001. He was also awarded the U.S. presidential service award in 2005 for his outstanding work to benefit the country’s youth.

In his appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, William argued that Robert Martin, the prosecutor in his case, had engaged in "impermissible racial discrimination in the jury selection". Martin had in fact removed all blacks from William's jury, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the US constitution.

In his appeals, Williams points to two California Supreme Court cases that involved the same prosecutor where his actions are at issue in People vs. Turner and People v. Fuentes. In both cases, concluding in the former case that:

"the record demonstrated that the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to strike black prospective jurors in a racially discriminatory manner for the apparent purpose of obtaining an all-white jury to try this black defendant for crimes against white victims."

In the People v. Fuentes, the court concluded that the prosecutor engaged in a pattern and practice of discriminating on the basis of race in the exercise of peremptory challenges".

California has embarked on an avalanche of executions right before a state senate bipartisan commission is set to examine the fairness of the application of the death penalty in the State.

The execution of Williams is but a glimpse into the broken system of justice in the State of California. Two other men are on the brink of being executed by lethal injection; their convictions were based on unreliable informants, racially biased practices, and poor legal counsel.

Death sentences in California continue to rely on discriminatory practices and sub-standard legal representation.

California has no formal system of proportionality review in either the trial courts or the state supreme court, and as a result, no mechanism exists to bring the issue of racial discrimination before state courts. This lack of meaningful review creates fertile ground for an institutionalised pattern and practice of racial bias.

There is little question that in capital cases, a competent attorney can mean the difference between life and death. "Often defendants are sentenced to death not for committing the worst crimes but for having the worse lawyers".

Executing a person, because of the incompetence of their attorneys, instead of the gravity of their crime, only adds to the arbitrary and discriminatory nature of the death penalty. The failure of Williams’ attorney to object to the jury selection should not prejudice him from receiving relief from the courts.

In his Feb. 2, 2005 dissent on the 9th Circuit’s decision to deny Stanley Tookie Williams recent request for relief (Williams v Wodford) Judge Rawlinson stated,

"The trial attorney missed more than one opportunity to make that simple motion; he could have made the motion after the first strike, the second strike, the third strike, or at the conclusion of jury selection – when he knew that the prosecutor’s challenges had resulted in an all white jury. Any way you slice it, counsel’s failure to object constituted ineffective assistance of counsel, and we should not hesitate to say so."

The California State Senate-established a bi-partisan Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. The Justice Commission has two years to identify the problems in the criminal justice system that lead to wrongful conviction and wrongful execution and to make specific recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor as to what is needed to make California’s criminal justice system just, fair, and accurate. The Commission has just begun to investigate these disturbing issues.

Governor Schwarzenegger exhibited total disregard for due process by allowing the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, it is indefensible to allowed his execution while critical questions about the administration of justice in the state of California are being reviewed by a bipartisan committee. The Governor should have halted all executions until the investigation of the Justice Commission is completed.

Governor Schwarzenegger failed to exhibit leadership by denying clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams and allowing his execution. He failed to recognise that it is the human capacity for change and redemption that endows us all with the potential to become better people.

Killing Stanley Tookie Williams completed the cycle of violence and risked shutting out the light of redemption that exists in all of us. Governor Schwarzenegger failed to realise that the criminal courts in the U.S. are the institution least affected by the civil rights movement, the courts have failed, and are failing in their duty to ensure due process for all, the death penalty in the state of California is selectively applied, it feeds prejudices against minorities, the poor and those lacking political clout.

Today we should remember the defiant last words of Gary Graham.

"I'm an innocent black man that is being murdered. What is happening here is an outrage for any civilised country. They are going to keep on lynching us for the next 100 years if you do not carry on [the] tradition of resistance. We may lose this battle but we will win the war. You must continue to demand a moratorium on all executions."

These words are a chilling reminder that Bush's USA and Schwarzenegger's state are home to racial division and bitter injustice. It is a place where life, liberty and happiness are all too often replaced by the pursuit of death, imprisonment and hatred.

Governor Schwarzenegger must declare a moratorium on all executions in California.