Posted on 12/03/2005 5:52:39 PM PST by bikepacker67
THE celebrity rush to save the life of convicted murderer and gang founder Tookie Williams may be the best argument yet for eliminating the death penalty. Dead, he's a martyr; alive and confined for life, he's just another nobody.
I have no wish to further elevate Williams in the public eye, but the circus surrounding his Dec. 13 execution date forces reflection.
First my bias and other disclaimers: I'm a relatively recent convert from the slow-gas-leak solution to death row crowding to a reluctant capital punishment opponent. I oppose the death penalty for one reason: The state makes mistakes, and one innocent murdered by the state is too many.
Do I think Tookie is innocent of killing four people? No, I don't. All appeals to higher courts, including the reliably liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, confirm that his trial was fair and his verdict just.
Does he deserve to live? My emotions say "no." My reason skips to a different question, one that National Journal White House correspondent Carl Cannon posed in the National Review (June 19, 2000) article that helped shift my thinking:
"The right question to ask is not whether capital punishment is an appropriate — or a moral — response to murders," Cannon wrote. "It is whether the government should be in the business of executing people convicted of murder knowing to a certainty that some of them are innocent."
That certainty has been established by DNA tests showing that many death row inmates did not commit the crimes for which they were convicted. Case closed.
The painful part of this position is that we who oppose capital punishment on these grounds have to breathe the same air as the celebrities, political panderers and other hankie-twisters who materialize every time a "Tookie" runs out of options and faces a far more humane death than that which he delivered to others.
To refresh your memory, Tookie — who founded the notoriously vicious Los Angeles gang the Crips — was convicted of killing four people during a murder-and-robbery spree in 1979 that netted him roughly $250.
His first victim was Albert Owens, a store clerk in Whittier, whom Tookie murdered to eliminate witnesses and "because he was white." The others were an elderly Chinese couple and their daughter, whom Williams referred to as "Buddha-heads." All were shot at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun. Williams' defenders insist he is reformed and point to children's books he has written in prison urging kids to stay away from gangs. They also point to his 1997 statement apologizing for his role in glamorizing gang life, though he never apologized for his crimes.
The usual suspects have mobilized on his behalf, including Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Danny Glover, Jesse Jackson, Snoop Dogg (a fellow former Crip),'60s radical Tom Hayden and Mario Cuomo.
Perhaps some of these celebrities share the same concerns I've expressed. But others, including an activist visiting California schools in recent days to enlist children in a "Save Tookie" campaign, make it difficult to steady one's hands and stick to one's convictions.
Stefanie Faucher, projects director for the grass-roots group Death Penalty Focus, stopped at an Oakland high school, where she told students there was little evidence to convict Williams, despite what all those courts and judges had to say. Faucher left with 29 letters petitioning the governor for clemency.
It seems clear that the courts have done their job and that Williams is guilty. But it is also abundantly clear that the dramas surrounding such executions grant celebrity status to the least deserving among us.
Our first principle should be never to kill an innocent person, and thus err on the side of life. We thus liberate ourselves from involuntary servitude as audience to those for whom death row has become a stage.
Finally, killers such as Tookie Williams, condemned to life without parole, vanish into the hell of obscurity where they belong.
It means he'll be on the street in 20 years or less.
The same logic applies to life in prison without parole, or even 1 year in prison. What business of the state is it to imprison someone who is potentially innocent?
Sorry, I don't buy it. Yes, the state makes mistakes, due to lying witnesses or misguided prosecutors. There are evils in our society, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore justice, or sacrifice justice because someone may, MAY die due to the wrongful acts of another.
I oppose the death penalty too, and I have a recipe for avoiding it: don't commit pre-meditated murder, and you are certain to avoid it.
Let's start with the obvious - one is reversible, one isn't.
You said: Let's start with the obvious - one is reversible, one isn't.
***
How can one reverse a wrongful imprisonment? Can you return that time to the person? If you have lost part of your life, can the state return it to you? No. Yet we don't hear many arguments about ending imprisonment. The "one innocent life" argument sounds compelling, but what about innocent lives lost due to the failure to do justice? I agree there are no perfect solutions, but the country has spoken, through its people.
Ms. Parker is wrong. Alive, he's a danger to other inmates, guards, and anyone who gets in his way if he tries to escape - he knows he'll be spending the rest of his life in prison, and has no reason not to kill. Dead, he's only a danger to worms who get sick eating his foul carcass.*
[*No worms were harmed in the making of this rant.]
As long as he's alive, some radical, Leftist Liberal Governor or President can always pardon him or commute his sentence to "time served", or some such nonsense..
Only a properly carried out death penalty will guarantee this piece of filth never violates another human being again..
Very true - but I think there is a definitive shift occurring. I see people recognizing the inherent weaknesses in our justice system and taking steps to correct them. You see CCW laws being passed nearly everywhere. Even better, right to defend laws are starting to come into play.
Limit the power of the state and increase the rights of the citizens to defend.
I think the people will speak again and this time it will be against the death penalty.
No. Dead, he's a fading memory. Alive and confined for life, he's only confined until the same reprobates who saved him from execution can convince some moron judge that he should be released. ALive, he's still wasting valuable air and justice is still not served. Alive, he's an insult to every Californian who demanded a death penalty be made into law.
This piece of garbage should die; no amount of inverse reasoning or clever counter-argument should change that.
One major problem with life imprisonment is that the killer is able to kill again. Execution is the only way to protect society.
Tookie is not innocent. He is a brutal sadistic murderer that should have been executed 20 years ago.
Tookie is not innocent! He should have been executed 20 years ago.
I decline to yield one inch to "the circus." He should have been executed many years ago. The Susan Sarandon types do everything they can to throw sand into the machinery of justice and then, in the end, argue that it has taken so long and been so expensive and the perp, meanwhile, has found Jesus so we should just call it all off. I am unmoved.
I admit that I am, though, troubled at wrongful convictions, although not sufficiently to still the hand of justice. One way I manage this problem in my own mind is to reflect that most wrongful convictions (I have no data...I admit) are probably against chronic felons. Their history helps (legally or illegally) to put them in the fix that they are in. I just consider it a secondary consequence of being criminal scum that you are exposed to some jeopardy of taking an occasional fall that, strictly speaking, you don't deserve. This is an injustice that does not in the least disturb my slumbers.
Any indications on how Arnold is leaning on the clemency issue?
The left will try to keep the most heinous killers away from the electric chair and the lethal injection. They demand endless appeals and evidence. Even one innocent man executed is too much.
This is in stark contrast to how they treat abortion. Killing of the innocent unborn is a right that should never be questioned according to them. No fetus, even one 8 months old, is innocent.
#1 Killers deserve to be killed. Executed if you will. They get what they did to others. The scales of justice get balanced
#2 The taxpayer should not have to support killers in prison. Swift executions are the most desirable
How about real justice where killers are executed instead of getting to live for decades after their lethal crimes? How about justice for the victims and their anguished families? If someone dear to me was murdered I would feel much better when the killer was executed
You are only concerned with keeping killers out of society. Out of circulation
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