Barbershop Regulars Take Sides Over Tookie

Should Tookie die?

It was the question of the day at L.T.’s barbershop in South Los Angeles, and there was no shortage of sermons, many of which were shouted loudly enough to rattle the photos of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela.

“These are my heroes!” bellowed shop owner Lawrence Tolliver, who doesn’t have much use for four-time killer Clarence Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang -- even if he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The barber thinks he should be executed as scheduled on Dec. 13.

Tolliver, facing fierce opposition from regular patrons of his clip joint, wasn’t buying their argument that Williams had somehow redeemed himself with the anti-violence books he penned on death row. A man on death row would write or say anything to keep alive, Tolliver said.

“Changed, redeemed, found God -- it doesn’t matter,” he insisted, scissors in one hand and comb in the other. “When you’re sentenced to die, you’re supposed to die.”

Ordinarily, Tolliver would have had at least one vote of support, but his 80-and-then-some partner Eddie Ford was off duty at the moment.

“You know what Mr. Ford would say,” Tony Wafford said. “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. I’ll kill him myself.”

That wasn’t how Tolliver’s customers saw it.

Fred McDaniels, whose wife was murdered 15 years ago by a man now serving a life sentence, said he wanted his wife’s killer put to death at the time of the crime. But he has since softened on the death penalty, and in the case of Williams, McDaniels has doubts about his guilt.

“If there’s doubt,” McDaniels said, “you can’t kill a man.”

Fair enough, Tolliver said. But the murders were not exactly whodunits.

Williams has lost all appeals in the 1979 shooting deaths of a 7-Eleven clerk and a motel owner, his wife and their daughter. In the first case, a witness said Williams had smoked PCP before the crime and “laughed hysterically” at the groans of the dying man.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s the only one who could save Williams now, and he hasn’t tipped his hand yet on whether he’ll grant clemency.

Kevin Pickett was among those in the barbershop jury with doubts about Williams’ guilt. He used to lift weights in the same gym as Tookie Williams 30 years ago.

“It’s difficult for me to believe he killed four people in that manner,” said Pickett, who recalls Williams as an iron-pumping behemoth who didn’t need a gun to intimidate or hurt anyone.

Forget his guilt or innocence in the murder cases, argued Wafford, adding that as a gangster, Williams didn’t do the damage that mobsters Meyer Lansky and John Gotti did. Williams shouldn’t be killed, Wafford said, because the government shouldn’t be in the business of executing people, particularly when black men are disproportionately represented on death row.

Gender, race, social standing, money -- that’s what decides whether an accused person lives or dies, Wafford argued loudly enough to be heard in Sacramento.

Even Tolliver had to admit he had a point. “The downside of capital punishment,” he acknowledged, “is that all you do is kill black people.”

But speaking of statistics, Tolliver said, the customers in his shop shouldn’t forget that they are more likely to be killed by a black man than anyone else. Tookie apologized for all the decades of mayhem, death and suffering in Los Angeles caused by street gangs, Tolliver went on, but he hasn’t apologized for the murders of those four people.

If Williams confesses and apologizes, Tolliver said, then he’ll support clemency.

Wafford listened patiently, then weighed in against the death penalty for Williams or anyone else.

“Is that the best we can do in so-called civilized society, in this great Christian nation?” he asked. “What we’re missing is the problem. Kids don’t have simple stuff. Do you remember music in the schools? They’ve got no books now, but they’ve got metal detectors. Killing Tookie doesn’t change a thing.”

“All the jobs are gone,” Pickett said. “All of our fathers had jobs.”

One patron, who didn’t take a stand on the execution, did complain about the cost of keeping Tookie alive nearly 25 years after he was sentenced to die. This drew a sneer from Wafford, and then Tolliver went ballistic.

“We are not monolithic,” he roared. “You say everybody who doesn’t agree with you thinks like a white man. I want [Tookie] to be a man and say he did it. ‘I am responsible for my actions.’ ”

To test the purity of the arguments, one patron tossed out a question:

If a white man killed four little black girls, should he be executed?

Wafford’s answer was quick.

No, he said flatly.

Tolliver nearly blew a gasket.

“Put down from all of us,” Tolliver instructed me, “we say he’s a liar.”

“It’s wrong to kill a man,” Wafford insisted. “I stand on that.”

What about Saddam? I asked.

Wafford paused ever so briefly before repeating his stand on the death penalty.

What about Osama bin Laden?

A longer pause by Wafford; same answer. But McDaniels -- the man whose wife was murdered -- said yes, if they ever find him, Bin Laden should get the hot squat.

“I’d rather execute O.J. than Tookie,” one man offered.

I suggested that Tolliver might not be the lone holdout for execution if Rev. Roger Smith, a regular contestant in the daily wrangling, were there. Tolliver managed to reach him by phone just after he’d finished a round of golf.

“I believe in redemption,” Rev. Smith told me, “but if you run afoul of man’s law, you have to pay the price even if you’re redeemed.”

Two votes for execution.

At least a dozen for clemency.

Wafford grabbed the phone and said to Smith:

“Jesus wouldn’t do that, pastor.”

*

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez.