Letters to the Editor
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"The Execution of Stanley Tookie Williams"
How can we look ourselves in the mirror?Will we be looking at the face of another murderer?
With disdain for the possibilities of rehabilitation we lay another dead black man on the Alter of Justice.This is just dispicable.
How many kids in LA woke up this morning and gave up?Gave up on the possibility that there is a second chance in this life?
The state of California sent a clear message this morning:NO.
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Excuse me for not being overly sympathetic.
I am against the death penalty, in all cases, for both moral and practical reasons. I just feel I could probably do a lot better than Tookie Williams for a poster child supporting its abolition. For one example, there were the people found innocent in Illinois a few years ago. Maybe Tookie is innocent. I don't know enough about the case to make a judgment, but if it is proven at some point that he was innocent, as he claimed to the end, then what? We already killed the man.
As for Tookie Williams the man, he wasn't just a gangster who screwed up. This guy CO-FOUNDED the Crips gang. The pain and suffering this man has caused goes far beyond just the four people who died by his own hand. Sure, he wasn't convicted of this arguably larger crime against humanity, but I have a hard time believing that what he did while in prison could possibly erase what he did as a free man, as do many who favor the death penalty. You can't make an argument like this and expect to come even one inch closer to the goal.
So go find someone for whom DNA evidence on file might exonerate him, or someone whose lawyer makes Lionel Hutz look like Perry Mason, or a black man in Texas who was convicted by an all-white jury, or any of a number of death-row inmates for whom the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt" is a sad joke. Please, death penalty opponents, I'm begging you, don't ever again try to hang your arguments on a thin lattice of "redemption." You'll spend so much time arguing over whether the condemned is actually redeemed that you'll forget that what you were really talking about was whether "state-sanctioned murder" is acceptable in our "enlightened" society.
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This article made me feel weird
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.
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No need to be excused...
I'm wishy washy on this one. I can see both sides on the argument but the notion that even if was, while not a perfect poster boy for death penalty opponents, innocent of the crime he was convicted of, but that somehow he was guilty in a larger sense because he co-founded the Crips is a bit much. To follow that logic, I'm not sure I'd want to argue that guys who founded the Mafia were more guilty than say, a notorious gangster like John Gotti.
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Bullshit
How many kids in LA woke up this morning and gave up?Gave up on the possibility that there is a second chance in this life?
Tookie - which sounds soooo cute, never copped to his crimes. When asked to help the cops break the crips, he refused, claiming that would make him a "snitch". His books - the most of which sold 325 copies, never changed anyone - save for those already in jail - perhaps - the gangs are only getting bigger in LA - if you believe yesterday's LA Times. I'm against the death penalty - tookie should be sitting in his cell today penning more books; I didn't want him to die, but this claim that he was a source of light for inner city kids is nonsense. He was a bad dude who did bad things and left a legacy of death and destruction. it's one thing to be against the death penalty, and another to line up behind a very bad man who never admitted his crimes (jeeze, the ultra liberal 9th circuit refused to stop this execution). This is no Mumia, friends, who really did get a bad trial (though he's probably gulity). The only reason to have stopped this execution is because all executions should be stopped, not because a piece of shit is really a reformed piece of shit. My dad just got out of the clink - I met prisonerswhen he was inside - they all claim their innocence and they all claim redemption - including my father - and I don't believe him any more than I believed tookie.
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A letter I wrote to the governor this morning:
December 13, 2005
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,
This must be a strange morning for you. I mean, for all you 'Terminating' and on screen heroics, today marks the second time you’ve woken up with real blood, death blood on your hands.
And it’s a strange morning for me, too, because I have to forgive you. As a Christian, as a person who believes that forgiveness is the only thing that can heal the world, it’s my duty. I forgive you, just as I forgive the executioner, and I forgive everyone who was in that room at one-past-midnight, even Stanley Williams, who probably had blood on his more than once, whether he committed the crimes he was put to death for or not. And I forgive myself, for not knowing how to stop this all from happening, and for choosing to live in this state which has now killed two men during my residency.
And this morning, I find myself thinking a lot about the sort of forgiveness I have to give. Because it’s not absolution. It doesn’t take away what you’ve done any more than the clemency you denied Stanley Williams would have wiped his crimes away. Forgiveness doesn’t take away responsibility, it adds to it. And so Mr. Schwarzenegger, I’m asking you this morning to take responsibility for what you’ve done. You’ve let a man die when you could of prevented it. You have signed his order of execution. And I want you to live in the consciousness of that, of the ramifications of that act for everyone in your state. All of us woke up this morning touched by Stanley Williams’s blood.
And so I’m asking you, as our governor, to help heal us. Help take away the stain of violence from all our lives. Help us turn prisons into a place of healing and reform, so that convicted criminals don’t go back out on the streets more hardened and mean. Help turn our schools into places where learning is something that touches everyone, places where every child believes in possibility. Help us all remember each other’s humanity. And please remember the humanity of each of us, the people you have been elected to lead.
If you can’t do these things, I’m afraid you aren’t fit to lead. And while others might disagree, or get distracted by your silly jokes about taxes or your friendly demeanor, I won’t. And while I will still have forgiven you, I will not vote for you, for governor, for president, or any other office. My forgiveness is not absolution; absolution must be earned.
Thank you
Nora Sawyer
San Francisco, CA 94114