Concerning Tookie Williams and the death penalty; a rant
Stanley Tookie Williams, the notorious Crips gang co-founder turned anti-gang activist was executed just a 1/2 hour after midnight December the 13th. Schwartzenegger valued politics over decency, and denied the man clemency saying it was because he wasn't completely convinced that Williams was reformed. Williams maintained his innocence to the end.
I gotta say, it makes me ashamed. What kind of civilized society can, with such an imperfect judicial system, cast an ultimate and irreversible punishment such as death on any of its own citizens? Sure, there are bad people out there who deserve to be punished--Williams founded a street gang that has, since its conception to long after he was put in prison, been responsible for perhaps thousands of deaths--but when it's been demonstrated time and again that innocent people do go to jail and do end up on death row, it seems totally immoral to me that our society still allows such a permanent judgement as death to be cast.
"Well," you may say, "aren't some acts so heinous that they deserve death?" My answer is yes--and I gotta say, if Williams IS truly guilty of slaughtering an entire family, then I say fine--redeemed or not, justice was served. But what if, WHAT IF he was truly innocent? Then surely we're just as guilty of murder as the next inmate on death row. People make mistakes--it's a fact of life. People on occasion allow their predjudices to override the evidence in front of them. So how can we ever reverse bad judgements if the accused is killed?
What is the value of an innocent man's life? 50 guilty murderers? 100? I don't know about you, but I don't feel comfortable with the possibility of killing just 1 innocent person. If that means sparing the lives of the truly guilty, then so be it.
And in the case of Tookie Williams, a man who, even if he was innocent of the murders he was charged with, could not have been without sin. He helped found a violent street gang, for chrissake! However, when incarcerated, Williams was able to reform and become an anti-gang activist, negotiating truces between gangs and writing books for children on the dangers of gangs. Williams showed that even monsters are capable of doing great good. As fellow humans, also capable of great good and great evil, shouldn't we have mercy and give them the chance to atone for their crimes in a meaningful way?
Please comment. Your thoughts are very welcome.
posted by Queen Jezebel the Wicked @ 11:14 AM
4 Comments:
I agree with you very much. Especially if you look at the fact that he has very much shown reform. He knows that the gang he started and the way he was in the past are terrible things. People make mistakes, some of them we percieve (mostly thanks to our societal "norms") as worse than others. However, I believe that all "sins" as it were are forgiveable, especially if someone shows that they have obviously learned from their past. It's part of what I was saying about not having regrets. In this case I think I could understand regretting your past actions, but you can also take them and say "hey, that happened and there's nothing I can do to take it back now so I'll do what I can to prevent people from doing similar things in the future." At least he had that instead of so many people who are almost glorified for the things they do and thanks to the media make it look cool to hurt other people.
Those are my rather poorly articulated thoughts.
I would have to say that I honestly don't have enough information to make an ultimate judgement on this case right now. Firstly, however, I will state that my position on the death penalty in general is that if the death of one person prone to disgusting acts of violence can be trusted, with sufficient evidence, to deter subsequent crimes by other such criminals to a high number, then I am for it. However, being that "sufficient evidence" must be weighted against the premeditated taking of a human life, this proof would be hard to gather, and highly relative to the nature of the crime and the social and psychological subgroups of the prospective criminals to be deterred - i.e., we're nowhere near that yet.
Secondly, I would say that I agree with you on the concept of "justice", as implied by a certain governor, not being sufficient to merit this act. As the death penalty is administered by the state, our supposed representatives, their concept of justice must be accurately representative of the closest agreement between citizens' moral codes to be truly just. Electing officials to make the decisions is merely the "most acceptable estimate" of California justice - it can't possibly be considered the most accurate. Even if we had the means of weighing in every Californian's vote on this case, their own views on their own opinions would be inaccurate due to ignorance combined with the complexity of of justice. If penitence, desperation, self-defense, sanity, violent environment, age, and reliability of our legal system all come into play, we cannot know them, and there is no justice.
Lastly, as to this case, I will say that the administration of the death penalty here could have more to do with the state of the war on drugs and gang violence than with this individual case. What exactly they are trying to communicate, however, and how effective it will be, I'm rather skeptical about. I did once watch a documentary on the Bloods and the Crips, describing how the Crips started as your standard 70's gang of territorial scrappers, combining force for protection against established threats, until crack and other drugs came into play. So, if the execution is to hold him responsible for what the Crips represent today, there is no word strong enough to convey the error that occurred.
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