Now he's really the Terminator!
Despite my generally not being a big fan of the death penalty, I find myself not really able to get all that worked up over the fact that one of the founders of the Crips is being denied a stay of execution or clemency or anything that would stop his impending execution. I know he's supposedly redeemed himself, written a bunch of children's books and campaigned against gang violence, and all of that. Still, in addition to his own personal crimes, he founded a gang that terrorizes people in LA and nationwide to this day and whose members are guilty of a huge number of violent crimes. I just cannot get worked up over the fact that this guy isn't getting a break.
What do others think?
posted by Pete @ 12/12/2005 07:50:00 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Are you suggesting that if it weren't for Stan Tookie Williams there wouldn't be gangs terrorizing people in United States today? Isn't that a bit like blaming Bill Clinton for a lack of ethics in the federal government? (Granted, an off topic attack, but still fun.)
The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, expensive, inequitably applied to black prisoners, and an immoral use of state power as a means to personal revenge. The behavior of contemporary gangs doesn't change those facts - it just makes it easier to turn your head.
I think most of this blog's participants live in Virginia, among the most prolific of executioners. You can make a difference by donating to help the efforts of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. If you want to work nationally, give to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
I know most Americans disagree with me on this issue - I just don't know why. Anyone want to tackle that?
I agree with you Mike. The death penalty -- like the drug war -- is fundamentally, unequivocally broken.
Tookie Williams shouldn't be put to death because noone should be put to death. The death penalty is wrong. It's broken, it's barbaric, it's racially and socio-economically skewed, and it runs in all ways counter to what an enlightened civilized society should strive to practice.
There are no ways except the purely ideological in which it can even be posited to be effective, successful, or useful. With that said, about 1 out of 2 Americans disagrees with you on this issue, Mike. In addition to this issue, they disagree with you on welfare, affirmative action, abortion, drug legalization, environmental protection, progressive taxation, and foreign policy. And they will lump you and your anti-death penalty stance into the same category they reserve for "tree huggers", "pinkos lefties", and "femi-Nazis".
So it's one of the many incredibly divisive issues swimming around between the Right and the Left.
What I find strangely inconsistent is this: the Religious Right is vehemently pro-life... and pro-death. Penalty, that is. Apparently they know God wants babies to live, but that he's fine with the state executing criminals. Or convicted criminals. Assisted suicide (euthanasia) is a crime against God, but legal injection, hanging, and electrocution are A-OK dandy in His book.
Ummm, what?
The last time I checked the New Testament, revenge wasn't really the in thing to do. Revenge doesn't bring anyone back to life. It doesn't salve the victim's wounds. It sates blood lust, pain, loss, anger. Jesus didn't teach revenge. He didn't teach doing the easy thing. He didn't teach taking an eye for an eye, did he? No, he taught forgiveness. And that's what makes him a radical, even today.
The Religious Right has apparently forgotten this little factoid. They seem to be selectively applying Christianity's sanctity of life support. All life. Let me say that again: putting people to death -- anyone for any reason -- isn't Christian.
And I would love -- LOVE -- a Christian on the Right to argue this point with me, a Christian on the Left. And don't try to use the "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" argument. We all know Jesus drew the power sharing line between the state and the divine on this side of state-sponsored execution. We all know he was talking civil code / taxation -- not Tookie Williams in California.
I see the points about the hypocracy of being pro-life and against assisted suicide while still being pro-death penalty. However, why does this hypocrisy not transfer to the other side? How can one claim that executing someone who has grossly wronged our society is archaic, but euthanasia and abortion are permissable? It seems to me that such an argument is logically flawed. Death is death, whether it be a criminal, an unborn child, or someone incapable of pulling his or her own plug. I'm pointing fingers everywhere on this issue, from the "socially conscious" Left to the "Bible thumping" Right. What right does ANYONE have to determine the value of another person's life? Certainly Tookie found no value in the lives of his multiple murder victims.
The biggest problem with the death penalty, IMO, is that people are falsely convicted. All the fucking time. And being dead kind of takes away the chance of the conviction ever being overturned, right?
In my opinion, we must err on the side of caution, even if it means letting 100 guilty people off where one innocent would otherwise be convicted. Isn't that one of the main reasons for our justice system being founded on the principle of "innocent until proven guilty"?
Quoth Sean:
The Religious Right has apparently forgotten this little factoid. They seem to be selectively applying Christianity's sanctity of life support.
Sanctity of life is not the only place Christians seem to be a little selective in which bits of the Bible they choose to apply (in fact, it certainly seems to me that Christians--i.e. the followers of Christ--seem to prefer applying the Old Testment eye-for-an-eye, vengeful YHWH stuff to the New Testament--you know, the actual words and deeds of Christ). I am sure my grandfather will not mind me reprinting an email I sent to him on this very subject:
I think that fundamentalist Christians tend to hold more with the Old Testament than with the new. The proof is in the pudding: George W. Bush famously said, "if you are not for us, you are against us". He was quoting Matthew 12:30, and this is a passage that many American Christians will quote at you. But what about Luke 9:50, wherein Jesus says *the exact opposite*? "And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us."
Why the contradiction? Well, in my Googling over this apparent inconsistency, I found the following page. wherein Ken Collins (whom I know nothing about) theorises that Jesus was referring to demons, not people, in Matthew 12:30. Which would be more consistent with Jesus's message of peace and brotherhood.
@Todd: You're 100% on target, and I will join you pointing fingers at anti-death penalty / pro-abortion liberals for their hypocrisy. It's going to make me launch into an abortion rant, though. So I will re-post my rant, because I'm now well and truly fired up.
I would humbly point out that there is, in fact, a gap between the reasoning of pro-life and pro-choice individuals that, while it does appears to leave the pro-DP/pro-lifers in an untenably hypocritical position, leaves the pro-choice/anti-DPers on solid ground. That is:
Pro-lifers roundly claim that abortion is wrong because it kills a baby, hence kills a person, and if they go whole hog on the religious side, kills a being to whom God has entrusted a spirit. Hence, it is wrong. This puts them in the position of saying that killing babies is wrong, but killing other people is OK. (That being said, I'm sure that these folks would say that the babies haven't been convicted of a capital, or any other sort of, crime and therefore they are being consistent. Crime = OK to kill, no crime = no kill.)
However, pro-choicers tend to argue that abortions are OK because a woman gets to choose what to do with her body and that what is removed from her body during an abortion is not a person, just a collection of cells that someday could become a person. Hence, they feel their stance is perfectly consistent. Person = no kill, not person = OK to get rid of.
Just a little end note to the first post on this list. No, I don't think that without Tookie Williams there would be no gang violence. But without Tookie Williams there may not have been the Crips. That's all on him and his co-founders. Maybe an exact replica of the Crips would have naturally sprung up, or maybe gangs would have remained as they were before the rise of the Crip and Bloods. Not great, but not the way they developed in the 80s and 90s. Who knows.
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