Death of Tookie Williams

This is a replay of a show I did on The Injustice System 2. That show was limited to an hour airtime but 2 hours in the archive. He called in before the hour was up and we talked through the second hour. I think you will find the talk interesting. It started of as a talk on the death penalty (we disagreed) but it went on to a talk about life. My shows can be downloaded at theinjusticesystem.net

THE EXECUTION OF STANLEY TOOKIE WILLIAMS / Eyewitness: Prisoner did not die meekly, quietly

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, December 14, 2005

It took 36 agonizing minutes to get to the defining moment of Stanley Tookie Williams execution by lethal injection early Tuesday, and when it came it shot through the stuffy, crowded witness room like lightning.

Williams lay dead, strapped to his gurney. It was 12:35 a.m. The prison guards had just ordered the 39 witnesses to leave, and the first to go were three friends Williams had asked to watch his final moments. It was so quiet that when one man jangled his pocket change, it echoed off the walls.

Then, just as they crossed the doorway to the chilly outdoors, the three whipped their heads back and screamed in unison: "The state of California just killed an innocent man!" Across the room sat Lora Owens, stepmother of one of the murder victims -- and the stone face she'd worn for the entire execution dissolved. Her eyes filled with horror, and she burst into tears, pressing a tissue to her face.