ACLU and Civil Rights Groups Urge Court to Consider Racial Bias in Death Penalty Case of Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

Stanley Williams v. Woodford
For Immediate Release: November 7, 2002

SAN FRANCISCO -- The ACLU of Northern California and a number of prominent civil rights organizations representing diverse communities throughout California filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of San Quentin death row inmate Stanley Williams’s claim of racial bias. The brief is in support of a petition for rehearing en banc, after a panel decision ruled against Williams. It was filed late Wednesday, November 6, 2002.

The civil rights groups argue that the prosecutor’s past racial bias in selecting juries and his racist closing argument in Williams’s trial should be relevant in determining whether he used racial bias in selecting the jury and in disqualifying all of the African American jurors. Williams was sentenced to death in 1981 for four robbery-related murders by an all-white jury in Torrance, California.

“Courts must be vigilant to prevent racial bias and stereotyping from determining the selection of juries, particularly in a capital case where it is a matter of life and death,” said Alan Schlosser, Legal Director for the ACLU of Northern California. “Exclusion from a jury on racial grounds undermines an individual’s – and a community’s – participation in the democratic process. Rehearing should be granted because the three-judge panel’s decision in this case would exclude the best evidence of a prosecutor’s racial bias.”

During jury selection, the prosecutor removed the only African-American citizens called into the jury box and during the trial engaged in a racially-coded closing argument that compared Williams in trial to a Bengal tiger in the zoo and Williams “in his environment” to a Bengal Tiger in its “habitat.” This same prosecutor was censured judicially twice for the same jury practice.

The list of amici also includes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Arab American Attorneys Association, Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF), Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asian Law Caucus, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

Williams became internationally known when a member of the Swiss Parliament nominated him for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work. Williams was a co-founder of the Los Angeles Crips street gang, but while in prison he became an advocate for gang summit peace talks, non-violence and an author of nine highly acclaimed gang prevention children’s books that are in schools and libraries throughout the world. Williams also started the Internet Project for Street Peace, which links at-risk youth from Richmond, California, with peers in Zurich, Switzerland, teaching them computer literacy and encouraging them to avoid street violence. Williams has received over 50,000 emails at his web site www.tookie.com from children, parents, teachers and law enforcement officials praising him for initiating work from a prison cell that is saving the lives of many thousands of youth.