At one minute past midnight, all of the celebrity adoration in the world couldn’t stop Tookie Williams from finally receiving his just punishment for the brutal murders of four innocent people.
***
I know that I might appear gleeful or happy when writing about the death penalty. But that doesn’t accurately reflect how I feel.
I agonize over each death penalty. I imagine the convicted killer sitting in the Death Watch Room with just an hour or two of life remaining. All of his visitors are gone, all of his supporters are on the other side of the walls that isolate him from everything. I try to imagine the fear that must be setting in and gripping him (I believe all murderers to be the ultimate cowards, and when faced with their own inevitable demise, I hope that their fears are overwhelming).
I try to place myself in the mind of a man with less than an hour to live. I have such a passion for life and such a will to live, that the idea that the state — that anybody — can tell me the exact hour of my unnatural-but-planned death terrifies me.
But the reason that I write about the death penalty and pay so much attention to to the men and women who are condemned to die by the state, is that I believe those who support it have an obligation to bear witness to the actual acts. I think it would be cowardly of me to simply say that I support the death penalty, but then bury my head in the sand and refuse to understand the people — both murderer and victims — involved.
I think it’s important that when the judge of public opinion asks “who condemns this man to death?”, that I be able to rise and say “I do.”
During his appeals Tookie refused to repent, vigorously asserting his innocence, even though repentence would have probably given him a better chance at life vs death. However, he didn’t claim his innocence while he was strapped on the gurney for the last 20 minutes of his life and while facing the family of the victims. If he truly was innocent, I believe he would have claimed it that one last time.
You’re right Robbie, case closed.
Dianne – I believe he was probably guilty, but I don’t think you have any basis at all to interpret his silence on the gurney one way or the other. Your belief about what you or he would do in such a unique situation is worthless until you’re in the situation.
Robbie, I admire your thoughtful approach to the death penalty. While we disagree on its appropriateness, I respect your refusal to be simplistic about it. You’re no coward.
Dan, that’s just my belief and it is not worthless. Beliefs are never worthless..they belong to the person who has them. The jury had a belief. The courts had a belief. The governor had a belief. I base my belief on his unrelenting and constant assertion of innocence, despite the fact that it could cost him his life. Yet when it did, he didn’t claim it.
I could be wrong. Just my belief.
Fair enough, Dianne, and I apologize for my choice of words. But my point, I think, stands. Neither of us can judge what someone else would do when strapped to a gurney to be killed by the state.
The State murdered Tookie Williams: Case Closed
They didn’t. Case not closed.
But what is closed? Stanley Tookie’s ability to every kill another person. And in the words of Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) in A Time to Kill:
“Yes, [he] deserved to die and I hope [he] burns in hell!”
All you people bitching and complaining that the state killed a man, you have no right to fight for this killer. the only people who have the right to speak about this man are the families of those 4 people who died needlessly for less than $100. Try telling those families that Tookie should be spared. He didnt spare his victims. If you ever have a relative die with 2 gunshot wounds to the back, you will feel alot differently about their killer.
[...] Many of them were at California’s San Quentin State Prison the day Tookie died. [...]
Chris you are an asshole.
If someone killed a person I love of course I would want to kill them, I’d want them to suffer. Does that mean it is right? No. Humans are supposed to be rational beings, we can’t decide over the life of another human being based on our feelings of anger and pain. And the idea of “an eye for an eye” is prehistoric.
Just out of curiosity, Maya, which other Biblical laws and ideas do you find “prehistoric”?
Ok, that’s just a rehtorical question. More to your point…the death penalty is not “an eye for an eye”. If it was, Tookie would have been shot in the back with a shotgun while he was laying face down on a cold floor.
Our laws of punishment our not dictated on “anger and pain”. They are pre-defined and prescribed. Criminals have the choice to abide by the laws of society or suffer the consequences of our punishments. To include death.