Stanley Williams - Conviction

Conviction

Stanley Williams was convicted in 1979 of all four murders with special circumstances on each count of felony murder (robbery) as well as multiple murder in the case of the Brookhaven event. The jury also convicted him of robbery in both cases, and found that he personally used a firearm in the commission of the crimes. The jury recommended the death penalty, and the judge accepted the recommendation and sentenced him to death.

From the beginning of his sentence, Williams maintained his innocence regarding the four murders, alleging prosecutorial misconduct, exclusion of exculpatory evidence, ineffective assistance of counsel, biased jury selection, and the misuse of jailhouse and government informants. Williams claimed that the police found "not a shred of tangible evidence, no fingerprints, no crime scenes of bloody boot prints. They didn't match my boots, nor eyewitnesses. Even the shotgun shells found conveniently at each crime scene didn't match the shotgun shells that I owned." However, the prosecution's firearms expert, a sheriff's deputy, testified during trial that the shotgun shell recovered from the Yang murder crime scene matched test shells from the shotgun owned by Stanley Williams. No second examiner verified his findings. The Defense claims this expert's methodology was "junk science at best."

Williams' gun was found in the home of a couple with whom he occasionally stayed. According to the District Attorney, the husband was undergoing sentencing for receiving stolen property and tried for extortion. Williams' lawyers have claimed that the District Attorney quashed a murder investigation in exchange for their testimony. The two shells recovered from the Owens crime scene were consistent with shells fired from this gun, with no exclusionary markings. The shell recovered from the Yang crime scene was conclusively matched to Williams' weapon "to the exclusion of all other firearms."

Critics claim that although he renounced gangs and apologized for his role in co-founding the Crips, Williams continued to associate with Crips members in prison. However, when contacted about Williams' alleged ongoing gang activity, Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman April Harding said there was no evidence of his gang leadership. Opponents also pointed out that he received a significant amount of money from outside sources. They stated that people who appreciate Williams' work sent him money. "It's as simple as that," said Williams' spokeswoman Barbara Becnel.

The prosecution removed three blacks from serving as jurors in Williams' trial. Williams' lawyers claimed that he was convicted by a jury that had no blacks, one Latino, one Filipino-American, and ten caucasians. The District Attorney provided proof, however, in the form of a death certificate and the sworn affidavit of another juror, that juror #12, William James McLurkin, was black. The defense responded that, contrary to the sworn affidavit, McLurkin did not appear black. They maintain that the trial record indicates that none of the lawyers—and particularly the prosecutor—thought Mr. McLurkin was black. McLurkin's driver license photo and the fact that both he and his mother were born in the Philippines was presented as additional evidence in a November 2005 petition for clemency. The defense, however, has neither stated whether or not his mother was actually Filipina, nor refuted the evidence that McLurkin was black.

According to the clemency petition, in his closing arguments, prosecuting District Attorney Robert Martin described Williams as a "Bengal tiger in captivity in a zoo" and said that the jury needed to imagine him in his natural "habitat" which was like "going into the back country, into the hinterlands." In a radio interview, Martin insisted that the analogy was not meant to be racial, and instead was a metaphor to the fact that Williams appeared in court dressed in business attire much like an animal in a zoo appears more docile than it would be in the wild.