When we first became parents one thing was very clear... if we wanted our children to learn to respond without violence, we needed to refrain from violence. We have all groaned at the mother in the mall smacking the older of two children, "I'll teach you not to hit someone smaller than you."
Yesterday the state of California walked with eyes wide open into the same stupidity - Stanley Tookie Williams was executed. I don't doubt that he did terrible things. Even if he was not guilty of the murders for which he was convicted, as the co-founder of the Crips, there was more than enough blood on his hands. No, the questions are whether the state had the moral right do take his life, whether his death serves any purpose other than revenge, whether we are better off with Tookie Williams dead?
Like the mother in the mall, at best we send mixed messages when we execute someone for killing. But the situation is much worse than that... we have seen statistics that show the death penalty is not applied fairly. Kill a white person and you're more than 5 times as likely to get the death penalty than you are for killing a black person. Find yourself poor, minority, and not particularly bright and the odds go up. On the other hand, if you are rich and famous, especially in California, you don't even go to jail. And there are those clear, even if rare, instances where the person executed or sentenced to execution is later discovered to truly have been innocent. If an execution has taken place, there is no turning back. And what of those who do find redemption in prison and begin to make a difference? Are we better off serving some blood lust than allowing them to begin to make amends for the horrific things they had done?
The political commentators made me even more cynical when they said that the governator made the correct political decision... there wasn't a groundswell of support for Williams and commuting the sentence would have damaged his conservative base so he was better off allowing the execution to proceed. And the execution becomes about politics rather than a man's life. It is not relevant whether he found some kind of redemption in prison, which apparently he had as he worked against gang violence. The political games are played. The culture of violence is reinforced. The root causes of gang culture are ignored and nobody goes home satisfied that the world is a better place.
It is time to end the death penalty.
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3 comments:
Hello Roy,
Great post. It is interesting to me how a system looking for remorse deals with someone who believes he is, or really is, innocent. For example, our Gov. cited Tookie's lack of conrition as proof that he was not accepting responsibility for his actions. If Tookie really was innocent of these crimes, could we really expect him to "lie" and say yes he did it and was now sorry about he did?
I struggle with the death penalty often. Here is my question, "If we could be 100% sure that the trial was fair, there were no extenuating issues, etc. would it then be acceptable to have the death penalty?"
Just another question.
Dave,
you've raised some good questions recently ;-)
I think, no... First off, in a nation where race still is an issue and class is almost as big, how could those issues be kept from influencing a trial? From a practical point of view it is less expensive and morally easier to just have life in prison without parole. There still is the question of whether killing someone is ever justifiable. And finally, if we are open to any possibility of rehabilitation or reparation, then death makes that impossible.
Thanks for this post Roy. I am trying to understand why there is so much public support for the death penalty and why it is still the law in the State of California. I heard this week that 68% of Californians support it. This seems unreal to me.
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