LOS ANGELES – Rapper Snoop Dogg and 1,000 protesters rallied outside San Quentin prison yesterday, demanding a murderous gang leader be spared the death penalty after turning his life around behind bars.
“It’s about keeping this man alive because his voice needs to be heard,” the rap superstar told a cheering crowd. “Change is going to come.”
Crips founder Stanley “Tookie” Williams, 51, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13 for the 1979 killing of store clerk Albert Owens and a family of three. But his supporters are begging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency, saying the former teen gangster has spent a quarter-century in prison speaking out against gang violence.
A mix of death-penalty opponents, reformed gang members, hip-hoppers, Rastafarians and Nation of Islam members showed up to the rally – and the crowd parted peacefully as Snoop arrived at the end and made his way to the podium.
Snoop, a former Crip, said he became interested in Tookie’s plight after watching the movie “Redemption,” which describes the jailhouse transformation of Williams – who has counseled youth by telephone and written children’s books against violence.
Rally organizers hoped to snag clemency supporter Jamie Foxx, who played Williams in the movie, but a Foxx rep said the Oscar winner couldn’t get away from a “Miami Vice” shoot in Florida.
Owens’ brother, C. Wayne Owens, said he doesn’t mind celebrity support for Williams but hopes his brother’s heartbreaking story doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
“I am upset by every victim of violence who goes unknown,” C. Wayne Owens told The Post. “There are people every day who are hurt and killed that we don’t cover because they’re not famous or fall into a group we don’t understand.”
Family members of victims are allowed to witness executions in California, but Owens’ brother – who wrote to Schwarzenegger to oppose clemency – said he won’t be there.
Williams followed up the Owens murder 12 days later by wiping out a family of three at the hotel they ran in south Los Angeles. He blew away 65-year-old Yen-I Yang, his 62-year-old wife Tsai-Shai Chen Yang and their 42-year-old daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin. With Post Wire Services