I am against the death penalty, okay, let's get that out from the start. HOWEVER Mike Farrell's statements about Stanley Williams made me ill. It's like Farrell was making some kind of liberal fetish object out of Williams. Oh, he's calm, he's sweet, he's on a higher spiritual plane?

A person can be evil and sweet at the same time. Domestic violence perpetrators, for example, can be extremely charming people when they're not beating the hell out of their victims. Ted Bundy was effective as a serial killer because he was good at getting strangers to trust his sweet, boyish charm.

So now is not the time to call anyone "sweet". It doesn't prove anything, it only alienates those who have life experience with "sweet" people who turned out to be anything but.

Some people claim Williams was innocent, but the innocence theory hasn't developed at all through facts. Who else committed the crimes? Maybe it was those Colombian cocaine dealers who slashed Nicole Simpson's throat? Nobody's caught them yet. Maybe it was them.

In the end, if you're against the death penalty, it shouldn't be because the condemned man seems sweet. The attitude of the condemned should be utterly irrelevant to the question of whether or not the state should be allowed to commit legalized murder.

I am opposed to the death penalty, but the publicity generated by the well-meaning but misguided activiststs in defense of Mr. Williams was appallingly stupid. By defending a remorseless, brutal murderer, who not only killed by his own hands but encouraged a culture of brutal killing that plagues Los Angeles to this day, the anti-death penalty advocates profiled in the article have done nothing but hurt their own cause. Our justice system is hopelesssly unjust and truly innocent people face execution everyday, but Mr. Williams is not one of these innocent victims of our unjust system. Each of those people has been marched one step closer to death by the foolish decision of these extremists to make an example of Mr. Williams. Mr. Farrell's admission that we all have blood on our hands is more true than I think he realizes. The death penalty is wrong in principle, but as a practical matter, if it is to be eliminated, battles must be much more carefully chosen.

I have been somewhat captivated by this since I heard an interview with Mr. Williams on NPR and have been unsettled by the actuality of his execution since I read the report this morning. It really isn't a question of whether or not Mr. Williams reformed, it is a question of whether or not we as human beings have the right to decide whether a man lives or dies. Yes, Mr. Williams did wrong. And perhaps he really did turn himself around in prison and maybe he did positively effect change, or perhaps not. Those who argue that he was an awful man who deserved punishment are probably correct - but he would have been punished regardless. Prison is not Disneyland, after all. A life behind bars may be better than no life at all, but at least that is a sentence humans are entitled to give. I am not a religious person, but I think that questions of life or death should be left to God. Those who ignore that, as Mr. Williams did, will be judged in the end by someone with, perhaps, a bit more perspective.

Dear Salon:

The mainstream media covering the execution of Stan Tookie Williams generally did describe his anti-gang work from behind bars but failed to pay sufficient attention to problems with his original trial, including scant evidence and a racist trial.

The supposedly overwhelming evidence convicting him was far from that. There was no reliable physical evidence linking him to the murders for which he was convicted. Neither the bootprints nor the fingerprints at the crime scene matched his. The prosecution used shoddy forensics to link the gun registered to Williams to shell casings used in the murders. Williams had purchased the gun five years before the crime, but it was found under the bed of a couple facing insurance fraud charges. Every single witness used against him was either an accomplice in the crime or a jailhouse informant, all people who had something substantial to gain by testifying against him.

Finally, the racism used to convict him was appalling. He was tried by a nearly all-white jury, and the prosecutor described him as a "Bengal tiger" who, if set free, would return to his "natural habitat" of South Central Los Angeles. Indeed, he was brought to court in shackles, helping the prosecution to paint him as an animal.

As regards his personal transformation from behind bars, many commentators have described his work writing anti-gang children's books and brokering truces between rival gangs. Nevertheless, Governor Schwarzenegger, in denying clemency, pointed to Williams' refusal to apologize for the murders for which he was convicted. This lack of apology is not surprising, since Williams has consistently maintained his innocence of these crimes and has never received a trial free of racial bias. He has, however, apologized for founding the Crips and for contributing to gang violence.

In denying clemency, Schwarzenneger not only sought evidence of redemption but sought it on his own terms. For Williams to have taken responsibility for the murders for which he was convicted would have meant absolving the justice system of its racism and of its capacity for sentencing the innocent to die, a capacity that has led to the exoneration of 122 innocent people from death row. Stan Tookie Williams refused to absolve this system, and he paid the ultimate price. Indeed, Schwarzenneger revealed his contempt for justice when he cited Williams' support for political prisoners George Jackson and Mumia Abu-Jamal in denying clemcency. What Jackson and Mumia have in common is their exposure of the racism of the justice system and a commitment to fundamental social change.

The case against Stan Tookie Williams displays all of the flaws of the justice system in the United States, from shoddy forensics to racial bias to prosecutorial misconduct to the use of jailhouse informants in securing convictions. These flaws alone should rule out the use of the death penalty. However, his case also shows the ability of people to change. Fundamentally, use of the death penalty implies that there is no value in the life of its recipient. Stan Tookie Williams' works from prison shows otherwise. His execution exposes the barbarity of a system that says it would rather kill him than allow him to continue these works.

Sincerely,

Julien Ball

Campaign to End the Death Penalty