On Tookie
In about five hours, absent extraordinary judicial intervention, the State of California will execute Stanley Tookie Williams, carrying out a sentence imposed in 1981 by a jury that found him guilty of murdering four people. Having exhausted his legal appeals, Williams sought clemency from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governor said no. Here is someone making the case for clemency, and here is someone making the case against clemency.
Williams does not argue for clemency based on his claimed innocence of the crimes for which he was convicted, and his failure to acknowledge guilt is, as Governor Schwarzenegger's statement makes clear, perhaps the primary reason his petition was denied. Instead, Williams and his supporters argue that he has reformed and is a different person than the one who co-founded a violent criminal organization responsible for countless crimes and, despite his claims, almost certainly murdered four people. In short, they argue, Williams has demonstrated the type of "redemption" that should lead the Governor to spare his life.
I oppose capital punishment in all circumstances, and if I had the power to do so I would abolish the death penalty. The process in which the death penalty is determined, appealed, and implemented demeans everyone involved, as this sorry spectacle shows all too well. With that said, I am completely baffled as to why such an uproar is being made over the likes of Tookie Williams.
They say he writes children's books, but as any recent visitor to a bookstore could tell you, that hardly puts him in select company. He's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which, it turns out, is only slightly harder than getting nominated to lead your local Block Watch. But he's been redeemed, they plead. I hope he has, although in a world in which the death penalty exists I am not sure why that matters. Personal redemption is, to say the least, a rather difficult thing for a governor to measure, unlike, say, four dead bodies or lots and lots of votes.
As I said, I do not want Williams to be executed tonight. But I also do not want a justice system in which 25 years of trials, appeals, habeas corpus appeals, and then more habeas corpus appeals are trumped by something so unmeasurable as the perceived state of a man's heart. The answer, of course, is not to be in the position where this is the choice we have to make.
Williams does not argue for clemency based on his claimed innocence of the crimes for which he was convicted, and his failure to acknowledge guilt is, as Governor Schwarzenegger's statement makes clear, perhaps the primary reason his petition was denied. Instead, Williams and his supporters argue that he has reformed and is a different person than the one who co-founded a violent criminal organization responsible for countless crimes and, despite his claims, almost certainly murdered four people. In short, they argue, Williams has demonstrated the type of "redemption" that should lead the Governor to spare his life.
I oppose capital punishment in all circumstances, and if I had the power to do so I would abolish the death penalty. The process in which the death penalty is determined, appealed, and implemented demeans everyone involved, as this sorry spectacle shows all too well. With that said, I am completely baffled as to why such an uproar is being made over the likes of Tookie Williams.
They say he writes children's books, but as any recent visitor to a bookstore could tell you, that hardly puts him in select company. He's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which, it turns out, is only slightly harder than getting nominated to lead your local Block Watch. But he's been redeemed, they plead. I hope he has, although in a world in which the death penalty exists I am not sure why that matters. Personal redemption is, to say the least, a rather difficult thing for a governor to measure, unlike, say, four dead bodies or lots and lots of votes.
As I said, I do not want Williams to be executed tonight. But I also do not want a justice system in which 25 years of trials, appeals, habeas corpus appeals, and then more habeas corpus appeals are trumped by something so unmeasurable as the perceived state of a man's heart. The answer, of course, is not to be in the position where this is the choice we have to make.
posted by FCB at 10:00 PM
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