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Lawyers Pursue Longshot Bid to Stop Execution Motion seeks data on ballistics, crime scene evidence in the Stanley 'Tookie' Williams case. By Henry Weinstein Times Staff Writer November 11, 2005 Attorneys for four-time convicted murderer Stanley "Tookie" Williams are trying to get access to a wide array of trial evidence in a longshot bid to stop his execution on grounds that his convictions were unconstitutional. Williams, 51, a co-founder of the Crips gang, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13. This week, his attorneys asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant him clemency for his work as an anti-gang activist on death row. On Thursday, Pasadena attorney Verna Wefald filed an 82-page motion with the California Supreme Court in San Francisco. The motion seeks information about ballistics and crime scene evidence, as well as records about witnesses who testified against Williams in return for immunity or other benefits. Wefald's motion, which was filed under a 2003 California law enacted in the aftermath of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart corruption scandal, said she was seeking material "that was not disclosed by the prosecution but should have been." The state Supreme Court immediately issued an order directing the state attorney general's office to respond to the motion by Nov. 18. Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, questioned the motion's premise, saying the information requested "has been provided to Williams and consistently made available to Williams for over two decades." "It is clear that Williams' legal strategy is to try to re-litigate the trial. Each court that has heard Williams' claims has affirmed the judgment," Barankin said. Williams has been on death row since 1981 for the 1979 killings of Albert Owens, a clerk at a Pico Rivera 7-Eleven; and Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, who were shot to death 12 days after Owens at their Vermont Avenue motel. One of the key items in the voluminous papers filed by Wefald on Thursday was a declaration by a forensic expert disparaging work done by law enforcement after the slayings in 1979. "After having reviewed numerous documents in Mr. Williams' case, I believe that it is critical to reexamine the firearm evidence, the only physical evidence purporting to link Mr. Williams to the crimes," wrote David L. Lamagna, a Massachusetts scientist who is president of American Forensic Technologies, who added that the testimony offered by a sheriff's deputy at Williams' 1981 trial was "junk science at best." Lamagna said that "the overall police forensic examination was substandard and less than thorough" and did not include a formal crime-scene reconstruction. Among the witnesses who Wefald is seeking information about is James Garrett, whose apartment Williams used periodically at the time of the murders. Law enforcement officials came to talk to Garrett shortly after the 1979 killings to ask him about another slaying. Garrett told the authorities that he knew nothing about that death but that Williams had murdered the Yangs and Lin. Garrett gave authorities Williams' shotgun. Although members of the family of three who were killed at the South-Central motel Feb. 28, 1979, were shot numerous times, only one spent shotgun shell was found at the crime scene, according to police reports cited in Wefald's motion. Court records show that Sheriff's Deputy James Warner examined the shell and compared it to test firings of Williams' shotgun. Warner said in a report March 15, 1979, that he could not determine if the shell came from Williams' gun because there were "not enough" characteristics "for a positive comparison." Robert Martin, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted Williams, directed Martin to redo the tests. On April 18, 1979, Warner filed a supplemental report, this time saying he was positive that the shell came from Williams' gun. In his second report, Warner testified that the shell could not have been fired from any other shotgun because he was able to "find sufficient patterns within the [breech] face and the firing pin." However, Lamagna wrote that Warner's claim had "no scientific basis" because he did not follow "standard practice" in documenting the shell's markings. "The fact that Warner changed his opinion, without any real scientific basis for such an opinion change, seriously undermines the reliability of his testimony," he wrote. Garrett, his wife, Esther, and a man named Samuel Coleman testified that Williams told them he had committed the motel murders. Years later, Coleman filed a sworn declaration that he was severely beaten by police and that he later was offered immunity in exchange for testifying against Williams. The Garretts were facing criminal charges at the time and later received probation on those charges. No physical evidence linked Williams to Owens' murder. The key witness against Williams was Alfred Coward, who testified that he, Williams and two other men went to the store to rob it and that Williams shot Owens. Coward testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution. He is now in prison in Canada for killing a man during a robbery. Read Tookie Timeline   News Topics | Home | Research | History | Blood Gangs | Crip Gangs | People| Life in a Gang | Gallery | Iraqi Cards |