[Crime and Punishment]
Tookie.
Looking through Memeorandum this morning, Stanley "Tookie" Williams' execution seems to be the only story happening. I don't really have the heart to wade through all the viscious commentary from the right-wing (post headings are adequate: "Time for Tookie to Pay the Piper" "Enjoy the Needle, Tookie!"). As a coda to my earlier thoughts on execution, Arnold's reasoning for denying clemency--like those headlines--couldn't be clearer:Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not just reject Stanley Tookie Williams' request for clemency, he aggressively attacked the central element of the former gang leader's case: Williams, he said, had never really reformed.Execution is not about achieving reform. It's about revenge. Leaving it in the hands of one man to determine another's worth only highlights this.
2 comments:
Um....don't know that I want to follow up iggi's thing...he seems pretty pissed about the whole event.
I've got no problem with ending the practice outright, but really question using Williams as a poster boy. I suppose the counter to that would be that the practice is so abhorrent that even Williams doesn't deserve state-sanctioned murder. I'd respond to that, however, by only noting that in that case there's no need to mention Williams at all; just oppose the death penalty on principle and be done with it.
But definitely use the really messed up cases for leverage.
No democracy has any business killing killing its citizens, but I'm surprised you think Tookie isn't a good "poster boy." Are we so puritan that we must demand he make the confession of guilt? That seems to have nothing to do with justice to me. Otherwise, he seems pretty much like a model prisoner.
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