Salon.com > Gary Delsohn

Rolling back three strikes

Tue, 09 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

Joe Wilcox, a lay minister from the rural Northern California community of Christian Valley, supported California's "three strikes" law when voters overwhelmingly approved it in 1994. But six years later, while on a jury that was considering putting a man away for life for stealing a bicycle, he couldn't do it.

Wilcox was one of two jurors selected to sit on a three-strikes case in the Sacramento suburbs of Placer County involving Steven Bell, who had been arrested for stealing a $300 bicycle from the garage of a home in the middle of the night. The burglary occurred in February 1999, and an accomplice of Bell's also was arrested and convicted in the case. She got probation.

Bell had two strikes against him -- burglary convictions in Nevada from 1984, when he was 19, and from 1989, when he was 25.

"I told the judge, 'I'm sorry, I just cannot do this,'" Wilcox recalled. "From a moral standpoint I will not take part in a process that sends a man to jail for life for stealing a $300 bicycle."

Another juror joined Wilcox, and the judge removed the two from the panel. Without the dissenters, the jury came back quickly with a unanimous vote that the bicycle theft should count as a third strike. Bell is scheduled to be sentenced in the case next month and faces 25 years to life -- a punishment equal to or worse than the punishment many murderers face.

Indictments issued in Sacramento synagogue arsons

Sat, 18 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

After a nine-month investigation, federal officials announced Friday they have indicted white supremacist brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams on charges of torching three Sacramento-area synagogues last summer.

The indictments will include charges that the two also set a fire at a medical building in Sacramento two weeks after the synagogue fires as part of an attack against an abortion clinic inside the structure, sources say.

Both brothers are in jail awaiting trial on two murder charges in Redding, 180 miles north of Sacramento. The murders and arsons seemed to kick off a nationwide hate spree that rocked the country last summer, when they were followed by the Midwest shooting rampage by Benjamin Smith, a former World Church of the Creator adherent, and the Jewish day care killings in Los Angeles blamed on white supremacist Buford Furrow Jr.

The long-awaited indictments brought a sense of relief to Sacramento's Jewish community, where leaders have been extremely frustrated by the slow pace of the probe.

What the National Guard is doing for New Year's Eve

Fri, 10 Dec 1999 17:00:00 +0000

For months the FBI and local police have been warning that the millennium could mean an increase in terrorist attacks and hate crimes, as fringe groups do all they can to add to the chaos the turn of the century could bring.

Some Jewish, gay and other minority leaders have been warned to keep low profiles. Security at possible targets like Jewish schools and even such public utilities as dams and power plants has been increased. Police departments from coast to coast have canceled vacations and ordered their troops to work 12-hour shifts through the New Years' holiday.

Those who've been preparing for calamity got some vindication last week, when federal agents based in Sacramento, Calif., arrested two anti-government militia activists in connection with an alleged plot to blow up one of the nation's largest propane storage facilities just after the New Year.

Documents prepared by federal prosecutors allege that militia members were waiting to carry out their plot in order to see what happened with Y2K. With doomsdayers and end-of-the-world prophets predicting chaos, they allegedly thought it might be easier to carry out the attack after Jan. 1. Then, they figured, there would be so much carnage if the tanks blew, the government would be compelled to declare martial law. Public support for militia groups would then mushroom, the conspirators reasoned, and the federal government would eventually be overthrown.

“I'm guilty of obeying the laws of the creator”

Mon, 08 Nov 1999 20:35:00 +0000

Benjamin Matthew Williams, the 31-year-old white supremacist accused of murdering a gay couple outside this Northern California town in July, is now admitting that he slipped into the men's home while they were sleeping and shot them to death in their bed.

He did it, he said, because they were gay and God told him to.

When asked if he had killed the pair, Williams answered, "Absolutely."

During his jailhouse confession Thursday, Williams said the only regret he has about the murders is that they didn't inspire others to emulate him. And he insists his actions do not constitute a crime.

"I'm not guilty of murder," Williams said. "I'm guilty of obeying the laws of the creator."

Williams and his younger brother, James Tyler Williams, face two counts of first degree murder in the July 1 double slaying of Gary Matson, 50, and Winfield Mowder, 40, a prominent gay couple who lived near Redding in the rural community of Happy Valley, about 180 miles north of Sacramento. The elder Williams now says his brother had nothing to do with the crime.

Poster boys for the summer of hate

Wed, 06 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Sally Williams was sitting in the visiting area of the Shasta County Jail,
peering through the thick plexiglass shield separating her from her eldest
son and trying to reassure him.

"Um, I don't, I don't think you did what they say you did," she told
31-year-old Benjamin Matthew Williams.

"What do they say I did?" her son asked through the telephone handset.

"They say you took out two homos," she said in her soft whisper.

"Huh!" he shot back in a strong and certain voice, as if to boast. Then he
asked: "Why wouldn't you think I'd do that?"

Why wouldn't anyone? Since Williams' arrest in early July along with his
younger brother, James Tyler Williams, 29, the two young Northern
California men became poster boys for the summer of hate this country just
endured. Both men have been charged in the July 1 double slaying of Gary
Matson, 50, and Winfield Mowder, 40, a prominent gay couple who lived near
Redding in the rural community of Happy Valley, about 180 miles north of
Sacramento.