Execution sparks outrage among campaigners

THE execution of Stanley Tookie Williams yesterday outraged many in Europe and the US who regard the practice as barbaric.

Feelings ran particularly deep in Austria, the native country of California State Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Singer Joan Baez, M*A*S*H* actor Mike Farrell and the Rev Jesse Jackson were among those who protested against the execution in California.

"Tonight is planned, efficient, calculated, antiseptic, cold-blooded murder and I think everyone who is here is here to try to enlist the morality and soul of this country," said Baez, who sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot outside the gates.

At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI's top official for justice matters denounced the death penalty as going against redemption and human dignity.

"We know the death penalty doesn't resolve anything," Cardinal Renato Martino said.

"Even a criminal is worthy of respect because he is a human being."

The issue was amplified in the case of Williams due to the apparent remorse many believe the Crips gang co-founder showed by writing children's books about the dangers of gangs.

Leaders of Austria's opposition pacifist Green Party went as far as to call for Mr Schwarzenegger to be stripped of his Austrian citizenship - a demand rejected by Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel as "absurd."

In Graz, Mr Schwarzenegger's hometown, local Greens said they would file a petition to remove the governor's name from the southern city's Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium. A Christian political group went even further, suggesting it be renamed the Stanley Tookie Williams Stadium.

The human rights group Amnesty International also condemned the execution, pointing to "concerns about racial discrimination" during the trial of Williams, an African-American.

From London, Clive Stafford-Smith, a human rights attorney specialising in death penalty cases, called the execution "very sad".

"He was twice as old as when they sentenced him to die, and he certainly wasn't the same person that he was when he was sentenced," he said.

Among the celebrities who took up Williams's cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a film; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in Dead Man Walking, and Bianca Jagger.

During Williams's 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.