For a man who co-founded the Crips gang in L.A. and is convicted of the brutal slaying of four innocent people, some of us might not necessarily think the death penalty would be the worst of ideas.
Stanley “Tookie” Williams is scheduled to die from lethal injection Dec. 13 in San Quentin State Prison in California for the 1979 murder of four people.
The thing that’s important with Tookie now is that he’s become an anti-gang activist.
His children’s books are directed at teaching at-risk children the importance of not getting involved in gang life, including such pieces of advice as social work, finding the right friends and acquaintances, and abstaining from listening to Eminem (which is a good idea whether you’re at-risk or not.)
The proceeds for his books go to non-profit organizations, including Mothers Against Gang Wars.
Tookie, who to this day still maintains his innocence (and really, what convict doesn’t) offered the rest of his possibly short life up to helping children stay away from gang life.
He’s negotiated truces between gangs, produced public service announcements, and he’s even been nominated for both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in literature multiple times.
And, because of his activism?
Governator Schwarzenegger is slowly mulling over the decision to offer him clemency, and commute his death penalty to a life sentence without parole.
Either way, Tookie is going to die in prison.
Sounds to me like Tookie may be better off to society alive than dead.
Apparently, a some of the other writers I’ve read on this issue keep going back to the victims of the original crime, and how Tookie deserves to die for what he did.
Let me say it again, for the umpteenth time: our criminal justice system is not based off of retribution or revenge.
Instead, it’s based off the concept of rehabilitation, though we forgot how to do it.
I’m not saying that he should be released from prison and sent on his merry little gat-toting, cop-capping way, but killing the guy?
I’m not completely against the death penalty, you have to understand.
The death penalty is, in a macroscopic sense, society’s way of defending itself against, well, itself.
If on the human body you have a wart or an in-grown hair, then you remove them to protect the rest of the body.
If in the body of society you have someone who not only cannot be rehabilitated, but will continue to be the worst of blights on society, then you consider the death penalty.
Of course, Tookie and his attorney continue to argue that his original conviction was racially prejudiced, although they’re not claiming that this is their number one argument right now.
After all, the appeals are over, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the case, and the execution is a sure thing at this point.
That is, save Schwarzenegger’s option of granting clemency, which is merely a question of mercy.
Knowing Arnold’s previous stances in the cases of both the T-1000 and the T-X models, mercy does not seem likely.
Although his senior advisers John Connor and Katie Brewster have both been known to show compassion to non-mechanical creatures in the past, it is unclear whether Arnold will feel that “termination” is necessary in this instance.
Seriously, Tookie’s reaching out to kids and helping to keep some of them out of gangs.
Whether his original trial was flawed is completely irrelevant at this point: Tookie’s doing some right and making the best of his situation, by helping out kids on the verge of gang-life.
He can’t change what he did in the past, but he can do some good in the future, assuming he has one.
So, for the hope of our criminal justice system and for a man who’s now trying to help, here’s to Schwarzenegger not living up to his Terminator name.
Originally printed in the Daily O’Collegian December 5th, 2005.
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