Williams then and now. Texas would have killed him before he reformed.
At this point, nothing we write or say is going to make a damn bit of difference to the fate of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the convicted quadruple-murderer, Nobel nominee, children's author and co-founder of the Crips street gang who is condemned to die tonight at San Quentin at the point of a needle.
The California Supreme Court shot down an appeal to re-open his case. (UPDATE: So did the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal.) The only question is which brand of political suicide Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will decide to commit by either granting or refusing clemency.
Williams' clemency case rests solely on the questions of mercy and rehabilitation: the courts have already decided he should die, it's just that California's death penalty machinery is so rusted and clogged by inefficiency, delay and rank mismanagement that it's given him 26 years in which to turn his life around to the point where actors, rappers and politicians are pleading for it to be spared ...
Ask yourself this: If Williams had been condemned in Texas, would he have had time to reconsider his life? Renounce the Crips and the gang culture with which he infected Los Angeles? Write children's books? Get friends to put him up for the Nobel Peace Prize?
Probably not. He'd have gone to his grave more than 20 years ago, an unrepentant Crip.
But Williams was convicted by California jurors and condemned by a California judge. This gave him time to prove that not only can California's justice system leave room for stone criminals to be rehabilitated, but also that the system is completely broken.
Whether he lives or dies tonight on the word of a craven political hack of an ex-actor and failed governor, Tookie Williams will have taught us some interesting lessons about the way we Californians are allowing justice to be practiced in our name.
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 09:23 AM
