Hours after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to grant him clemency and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a desperate last-chance stay, Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed in the early morning hours of Dec. 13 at San Quentin State Prison.
Protest rallies, marches and vigils cropped up across California, including in the Southland. One of the largest protests took place in front of the Federal Building on Wilshire Blvd. in Westwood, where men, women and children holding placards saying "Executions teach vengeance and violence," "End the racist death penalty" and "Save Tookie" drew honks from drivers driving home from work.
A couple hours later, the anti-death penalty activists walked peacefully to a vigil service at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Westwood, which lasted until after Williams was proclaimed dead at 12:35 a.m. from a lethal injection.
David Cunningham, a 34-year-old computer consultant from Santa Monica, went to both events even though he didn't know exactly why he'd come out on such a cold evening. But as he headed into St. Paul's, he tried to explain.
"If I was to say who the weakest people in our society are, it's probably the people in our prisons," Cunningham said. "I know we have 2.2 million people in our prisons today, which is horrible and embarrassing.
"And we're one of the few industrialized countries that has the death penalty. I lived in Europe for the last six years. You talk to anyone there about the death penalty, they're shocked. Because we don't care for our weakest people."
Cunningham, a parishioner of St. Monica Church --- as is the governor --- pointed out that the Catholic Church is rightly anti-abortion, but weaker on maintaining a "consistent ethic of life" promoted most notably by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
"I think it's very very sad when the state kills," he said. "Vengeance for vengeance is not the answer. Outside of the fact whether he is innocent or guilty, we shouldn't be killing people.
"But it's turned into a political thing," he added. "It's horrible. We shouldn't be killing him. It's not the answer. It's God's decision."
For Susan Gosman, coming out to publicly protest the execution was a personal and difficult decision. Some 20 years ago, the middle-aged, Westside woman said she was kidnapped and raped. For a long time, she wanted to kill her attacker. And even after many years of psychological and physical healing, she just wanted to avoid the whole death penalty issue.
"But when Tookie came up, I couldn't avoid it anymore," she reported. "So I thought hard about it, prayed about it and meditated about it --- and eventually decided that killing him was not the answer, because any kind of killing is wrong, whether it's here or in Iraq.
"I don't want him released from jail if he killed those people. To me, it's not a question of redemption; it's a question that killing is wrong, whether it's Tookie who's going to die tonight or somebody else."
Gosman, who is Jewish, came to St. Paul the Apostle Church to stand vigil.
"I don't want to be alone tonight," she said softly. "I guess in this horrible and sad night it's important for like-minded people to be together."
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