'TOOKIE' REVIEW REJECTED STATE HIGH COURT WON'T REOPEN DEATH PENALTY CASE OF CRIPS CO-FOUNDER.Byline: Staff and Wire Services Crips co-founder Stanley ``Tookie'' Williams moved one step closer to the death chamber Wednesday when the California Supreme Court refused to reopen his case and halt the state's highest profile execution since the death penalty was reinstated. The ruling came as death penalty opponents rallied around the state to urge Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (German pronunciation (IPA): [ˈaɐ̯nɔlt ˈaloɪ̯s ˈʃvaɐ̯ʦənˌʔɛɡɐ] to save the life of the convicted killer- turned-gang peace activist. Williams is scheduled to die Dec. 13 by lethal injection after being convicted of murdering four people in 1979. Schwarzenegger plans a meeting on Dec. 8 with prosecutors and lawyers for Williams who are seeking clemency Leniency or mercy. A power given to a public official, such as a governor or the president, to in some way lower or moderate the harshness of punishment imposed upon a prisoner. Clemency is considered to be an act of grace. . In a last-ditch legal move, Williams alleged that shoddy forensic testing and other errors may have wrongly sent him to San Quentin State Prison San Quentin State Prison is located on 432 acres (1.7 km²) on Point Quentin in Marin County, California, United States, north of San Francisco. San Quentin State Prison was opened in July 1852, and is the oldest prison in California. . His lawyers asked that justices allow the re-examination of evidence that showed a shotgun registered to Williams was used to kill three people during a Pico Rivera motel robbery in 1979. They said the ballistics ballistics (bəlĭs`tĭks), science of projectiles. Interior ballistics deals with the propulsion and the motion of a projectile within a gun or firing device. evidence was based on ``junk science.'' He was also convicted of a separate murder at another location. State prosecutors argued there was no legal basis to reopen the case. Allegations about the sloppy forensic shotgun evidence were ``based upon innuendo innuendo n. from Latin innuere, "to nod toward." In law it means "an indirect hint." "Innuendo" is used in lawsuits for defamation (libel or slander), usually to show that the party suing was the person about whom the nasty statements were made or why the comments , supposition and the patent bias of his purported expert, not upon allegations of fact,'' prosecutors said. The court voted 4-2 without comment to deny Williams' petition to reopen the case. ``The extraordinary relief Williams sought is reserved for those cases which have legal merit,'' said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Eleven rallies on behalf of Williams were scheduled throughout Wednesday from San Diego to Sacramento to coincide with hundreds of demonstrations around the globe for ``World Cities Against the Death Penalty Day.'' In Los Angeles, more than 200 students gathered at a rally at the Mark Taper Auditorium library in downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area. The sprawling, multi-centered megacity is such that its downtown core is often considered just another district like Hollywood or to hear celebrities and Williams himself. ``Regardless of whatever happens to me, whether I am alive or whether I am executed, all of you will remember me,'' Williams said via a cell phone held up to a microphone by Academy Award-winning actor Jamie Foxx, who played Williams in a feature film based on his life. ``This isn't goodbye. The fact of the matter is that I am preparing for life not death.'' Rapper Snoop Dogg said Williams could have just sat behind bars all these years. ``But he is out there trying to make things better. His voice needs to be heard not executed,'' he said. In a separate Los Angeles rally, Williams' supporters took to the streets of downtown to urge Schwarzenegger to commute his sentence. About two dozen members of the Los Angeles Campaign Against the Death Penalty, including representatives from the ACLU ACLU: see American Civil Liberties Union. , NAACP NAACP in full National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Oldest and largest U.S. civil rights organization. It was founded in 1909 to secure political, educational, social, and economic equality for African Americans; W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. and the Nation of Islam Nation of Islam: see Black Muslims. Nation of Islam or Black Muslims African American religious movement that mingles elements of Islam and black nationalism. It was founded in 1931 by Wallace D. , questioned the fairness of Williams' trial. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: Rap singer Snoop Dogg appeals for clemency for Stanley ``Tookie'' Williams Wednesday at the Central Library. John Lazar/Staff Photographer |
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