Whether or not Stanley Tookie Williams redeemed himself in my or your eyes has nothing to do with it, the anti-gang books and advocacy, the Nobel Prize nominations (which outnumber those of our president) are all irrelevant.
Whether or not newly surfaced evidence that might have exonerated Williams and proven his claim of innocence is impertinent as well.
It has to only to do with whether or not the State has the right to commit the murder of a person convicted of committing murder.
And as noted, nothing I can say will alter anyone's beliefs in this regard, but I include Steve Lopez's article from this morning's L.A. Times that sums it all up fairly well.
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"I Watched a Man Die Today"
SAN QUENTIN -- It's just past midnight, and another Crip is on his way to the graveyard.
Stanley Tookie Williams, who shotgunned four people to death a quarter of a century ago and couldn't sell the story of his redemption to anyone who mattered, took a lethal shot in the arm and closed his eyes for good.
I watched him die from 12 feet away. The execution team struggled to tap a vein, and Williams raised his head as if to question their competence. He also looked at supporters and exchanged final words with them before the drugs kicked in and he was gone.
Nothing I saw made me feel any differently about Williams, the Crip co-founder whose legacy is terrorized neighborhoods and a chorus of weeping mothers.
His anti-violence books and speeches were too little, too late, and the methodologizing of him was as unconvincing as the Nobel nominations.
But his execution was a macabre spectacle in a nation that preaches godly virtue to the world while resisting a global march away from the Medieval practice of capital punishment.
I would have had no problem leaving Williams locked up with his regrets and haunted by his deeds for the rest of his natural life.
I watched a man die today, killed by the state of California with institutional resolve, and wondered what we gained.
Stanley Tookie Williams, who shotgunned four people to death a quarter of a century ago and couldn't sell the story of his redemption to anyone who mattered, took a lethal shot in the arm and closed his eyes for good.
I watched him die from 12 feet away. The execution team struggled to tap a vein, and Williams raised his head as if to question their competence. He also looked at supporters and exchanged final words with them before the drugs kicked in and he was gone.
Nothing I saw made me feel any differently about Williams, the Crip co-founder whose legacy is terrorized neighborhoods and a chorus of weeping mothers.
His anti-violence books and speeches were too little, too late, and the methodologizing of him was as unconvincing as the Nobel nominations.
But his execution was a macabre spectacle in a nation that preaches godly virtue to the world while resisting a global march away from the Medieval practice of capital punishment.
I would have had no problem leaving Williams locked up with his regrets and haunted by his deeds for the rest of his natural life.
I watched a man die today, killed by the state of California with institutional resolve, and wondered what we gained.
3 comments:
Yah, that was kool wasn't it?
I have no problem with hard punishment of cold blooded killers but I do not believe in killing defenseless persons who no longer pose a threat to society. There are fates worse than death-and death by lethal injection is not exactly the hardest of deaths. It's ironic that the melodrama surrounding capital punishment gives killers a quasi-celebrity status that they don't deserve. So, no to cold blooded killings, whether by murderers or the state; yes, to a lifetime of punishment for killers.
Eljoven
eljoven: Yes, I concur with that..."a lifetime of punishment for killers" sounds fair enough. And should evidence pop-up in the meantime exonerating the individual, politicians will be free to go to their graves sans the blood on their hands of a tragic mistake.
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