Schwarzenegger Considering Clemency for Crips Founder

There has been a movement in recent years of celebrities and others climbing on the bandwagon of various black death row inmates and demanding clemencies or pardons for them. The whole "free Mumia" movement has been trying to save a Pennsylvania cop killer for years, and so far has successfully staved off his well-deserved execution.

Now we have a similar case in California involving the founder of the Crips street gang, Stanley Tookie Williams. Williams was found guilty of four 1979 murders, but is claiming innocence, and a host of celebs and black political leaders are running to his defense. Tookie has supposedly become an anti-gang activist during his prison years and has even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Given that Yassar Arafat and Jimmy Carter have both won the Peace Prize, I don't think you can place much emphasis on that nomination.

The powerful prison guard's union has strong doubts about Tookie's conversion to peace crusader, and is opposing clemency:

The Corrections Department earlier this month posted a press release on its Web site about the upcoming execution, detailing Williams' crimes and asserting that he has been a gang leader while on death row at San Quentin Prison.

San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittendon, speaking on behalf of the department, went further in an interview last week, saying he suspects Williams is orchestrating gangland crimes from his cell.

"I just don't know that his heart is changed," Crittendon said, adding he has no proof of illegal activity.

The fact that Schwarzenegger is considering clemency for this guy (who is scheduled to be executed on December 13) makes me wonder if in some way this is a payback for the guard union's opposition to the governor's ballot propositions, all of which were defeated earlier this month. The guard's union was a major player in the fight against the governor's reform plans. I wonder if the governor is just playing this out to give the guards some grief.

You may recall another famous jailhouse conversion - the case of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas in 1998. Tucker killed two people with a pickax, but later became a born again Christian in prison. Few people had any doubts that she was a changed woman, and even the governor was convinced of her sincerity. However, the governor in that case allowed the execution to go forward because the punishment fit the crime, regardless of how she had changed in prison. The governor was George W. Bush.

If Schwarzenegger commutes this guy's sentence to life in prison, the death penalty will officially be a joke in California. If a guy can be convicted of four murders and still not get a death sentence, then we might as well eliminate the procedure altogether and save the millions spent on appeals.

Let's see how Arnold plays this out.