After the usual disclaimers to make sure he still though Tookie was a very, very , very, extremely bad man, Kleiman says
>Williams was convicted largely on the word of a jailhouse informant
who bargained his way out of his own potential trip to Death Row by
asserting that Williams had confessed to him. Such testimony is, of
course, inherently unreliable.
>If we're considering the question of whether Williams was guilty of
the specific murders he died for, rather than the question of whether
in some non-legal sense he deserved to die, then his role as the
co-founder of the Crips cuts for him rather than against him. His
notoriety could only have increased the pressure on the LA Sheriff's
Department and the LA DA's Office to cut corners in order to convict
him. That the prosecutor in fact used peremptory challenges to remove
all blacks from the jury pool is undisputed; nor is there any question
that he used strongly racist language (e.g., "jungle") in seeking the
death penalty. Is it implausible that a prosecutor willing to do that
might also offer perjured testimony and suppress exculpatory evidence?
Hardly.