Views » January 19, 2006 » Web Only

Reflections on Tookie’s Execution

By Salim Muwakkil

Last month’s execution of Stanley Tookie Williams is part of a grotesque revenge ritual that likely will deepen the cycle of violence it purports to diminish.

Williams, a co-founder of the Crips street gang, had transformed himself into a passionate anti-gang activist during his near quarter century in prison. When he talked of personal redemption and racial pride, it had a ring of authenticity—-and it rang a bell with other inmates. Record numbers of black ex-inmates now are flooding into communities that are woefully ill-equipped to absorb them. These returning community members are angrier than when they left. Cooped in fetid warehouses that long ago abandoned the goal of rehabilitation, they usually lack marketable skills and often scorn old-school black leadership. The resulting community friction is heating up and likely will worsen.

Williams embodied a style of leadership that is needed now more than ever, and America had much more to gain from his presence than his absence. He helped to bridge the widening gap between a growing class of criminalized “have nots” and an increasingly hostile black and white mainstream. Commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment would have allowed his message and his example to reach a larger audience.

But the state of California concluded that Williams’ death would serve a greater purpose. In the name of the people, the state committed premeditated murder to foster the notion that committing murder warrents the punishment of death. This circular logic is more than just dizzying; it corrupts the very logic of criminal justice.

A preponderance of studies have shown that capital punishment does not deter crime, ensure equal justice or promote domestic tranquility. But the practice persists because it resonates with a human impulse that demands vengeance. State-sponsored executions provide public sanction for that impulse, applying a Babylonian calculus to provide justification for this outmoded public ritual, positing a metaphysical scorekeeper with an “eye-for-an-eye” balance sheet. Our embrace of capital punishment is an atavistic romance.

This U.S. tolerance for official killing perplexes much of the Western world, which largely views it as barbaric. Entreaties from the Vatican and the European Union to spare Williams’ life failed, providing once again a vivid example of American exceptionalism on issues of social justice. Is our fondness for the death penalty a legacy of America’s “frontier spirit,” which fueled the massive massacre of indigenous inhabitants? Could it be a cultural remnant of a slave society’s need for brutal enforcement of racial hierarchy? (After all, most executions occur in the former “slave states.”)

But even eye-for-an-eye advocates should abhor the possibility of executing the wrong person. Williams was convicted on circumstantial evidence largely on the testimony of dubious witnesses; some of the questions surrounding the case were murky enough to warrant reasonable doubt. But his notoriety as a co-founder of the infamous Crips street gang mooted that doubt. The issue of his possible innocence has fueled a renewed focus on wrongful convictions.

Public awareness of wrongful convictions is the primary reason support for the death penalty is down to 64 percent from a high of 80 percent in 1994. Former Illinois governor George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executing death row inmates in 2000 after the state released 13 Death Row inmates who were wrongfully convicted. His executive order began a slow roll of concern among other states. New Jersey is the most recent: On January 10 the state legislature signed an order suspending executions while a panel examines their fairness.

Death penalty abolitionists will gain new support if campaigns to determine whether the state executed the wrong people bear fruit. The 1993 execution of Ruben Cantu in Texas and the 1995 execution of Larry Griffin in Missouri are being reexamined in the face of new evidence that casts doubt on their guilt

No account of William’s state-sanctioned slaying would be complete without a discussion of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s weird logic in refusing to grant him clemency. “Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption,” Schwarzenegger argued. Williams consistently insisted he was innocent of the four murders for which he was charged in 1981. (Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang and Yu-Chin Yang Lin were the victims.) Thus, the governor demanded the former gang leader admit to murders he denied committing in order to gain clemency. The logical inconsistency of Schwarzenegger’s ruling is par for the course when dealing with issues surrounding capital punishment. Paradox is inherent to a punishment that prescribes killing for killing.

But even if the death penalty made sense, it was senseless to kill a man whose life could have prevented many more killings. Unfortunately, we’re going to need all the Tookies we can get.

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• Reader Comments

  I think capital punishment is wrong and would vote to overturn it. I also think Tookie should have lived out his pathetic embarrassment of a life in that dungeon in anonymity for brutally murdering 4 innocent people (and he wasn’t even a man enough to admit that he did it - as the courts have proved over, and over, and over again).  Some people just can’t get their heads around convictions, some people still believe OJ didn’t do it! Normal people find this hard to believe of course. But there are still cranks out there.

  Tookie was a cheap street thug who founded one of the most notorios gangs in the nation. The amount of carnage that the Crips, Bloods, and every other gang that formed have devasted minority communities throughout this country. He’s is no saint. He is no martyr. He was just a cheap street gang thug with no conscience or honor.

  But I digress - Capital Punishment has to go. We’re on the cards on that one, eh?

  Posted by InThoseTimes on Jan 19, 2006 at 6:32 AM

  Tookie was a scumbag ... and the real shame is that he wasn’t dusted sooner.  The other shame is that liberals actually believe Tookie saying “I didn’t do it” ...  “I’m innocent”.  The most popular words in prison are “I’m innocent”. 

  Here is another scumbag that said “I’m innocent”.  He claimed he was innocent right before the state of Virginia toasted him.  And….. he was full of crap, he lied.  (read the article)

  ————-

  Va. killer executed in 1992 was guilty, DNA shows

  Published: 01.13.2006

  New DNA tests in the case of a man executed in Virginia in 1992 show he was, in fact, guilty of the rape and murder of his sister-in-law.

  The result was a blow for death-penalty opponents who saw in the case the potential for the nation’s first post-execution DNA exoneration.

  Roger Coleman, a 33-year-old coal miner whose case landed him on the cover of Time magazine, went to his death in Virginia’s electric chair insisting he had been wrongly convicted.

  “An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight,” Coleman said in a statement just moments before he was put to death. “When my innocence is proven,” he added, “I hope America will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have.”

  But the DNA tests, ordered last week by outgoing Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, showed that Coleman’s semen was found in the body of Wanda McCoy, the 19-year-old sister of Coleman’s wife, Warner announced Thursday.

  http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/111141

  Posted by tina1 on Jan 19, 2006 at 6:43 AM

  During his campaign for Governor in 1998, Jeb Bush proposed the toughest gun-crime law in the nation: 10-20-LIFE. Under 10-20-LIFE, a felon who used a gun to commit a crime like armed robbery would face at least 10 years in state prison.

  The 1999 Florida Legislature passed sweeping legislation that provides for enhanced minimum mandatory prison terms for offenders who commit crimes with guns.

  10-20-LIFE has helped to drive down Florida’s violent-gun crime rates by 30%. The state’s 2004, “Index Crime” rate is now the lowest in 34 years, and the violent crime rate is the lowest in a quarter century.

  The results under 10-20-LIFE are impressive. In only six years, from 1998-2004, 10-20-LIFE has helped drive down violent gun crime rates 30 percent statewide (see Firearm Involved Violent Crimes).

  During the 10-20-LIFE era, armed criminals robbed a total of 10,567 fewer people and killed a total 380 fewer than they would have if these crime numbers had remained at 1998 levels. These crime decreases occurred even as Florida’s population increased over 2.5 million (16.8 percent) between 1998 and 2004. Punishing criminals who use guns is making our state safer.

  ——-

  http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/10-20-life/

  ——-

  It’s hard to argue with those facts…

  Florida gun crime dropped 30% in 6 years…

  You can thank JEB BUSH for that !!!!

  Posted by tina1 on Jan 19, 2006 at 6:52 AM

  Tookie was responsible for HOW many deaths again? They only tagged four directly on him, but as the founder of one of the most vile, murderous street gangs in history his worthless hide was stained with the blood of thousands. Fuck him.

  Posted by g-love on Jan 19, 2006 at 7:08 AM

  Right on “g-love” .... great comment.

  Tookie was a scumbag ... and if you hear what the guards say about Tookie, he wasn’t the angel in prison that the hollywood moonbats portray.

  And this whole leathel injection is a crock ... it’s too easy for these scumbags.  This is what we should do in America for the death penalty.  It would be based off that movie “The Running Man”

  #1)  All executions are on pay-per view (Saturday night).

  #2)  The pay-per view show would have (2) or (3) executions.

  #3)  There would be various methods of executions.  Such as slowing dropping the scumbag in a tank full of alligators ... or put them in a pit full of rattlesnakes and cobras.  And there would be other methods, but not leathel injection.

  #4)  The victims family would be given the chance to participate ... such as being the one to slowly lower the rope with the inmate attached in the tank of alligators ... things like that. 

  The majority of the money raised by pay-per view would go to the State to help offset the budget of corrections ... but a portion of the money would go to the victims family ...

  LET THE GAMES BEGIN !!!

  Posted by tina1 on Jan 19, 2006 at 7:24 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 238 posts.

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