I don't know that Tookie's sentence can be commuted to life without parole

I believe at the time he was convicted and sentenced to death California did not have a life sentence without parole on the books and every murderer serving life was eligible for parole at some point. If so, then a commutation of his death sentence would have to be, imo, the "life sentence" that existed at the time of his conviction and sentencing.

It reminds me of a famous case in New Jersey involving Thomas Trantino, who, with a parter, killed 2 police officers in 1963 and was sentenced to death. After many appeals in 1972 the US Supreme Court held that NJ's death penalty statute was unconsitutional so his sentence was commuted to life, making him eligible for parole after 14 years, 9 months (the law in effect at the time of his conviction). He was denied parole over and over again until the NJ Supreme Court ordered him released in 2001.

So, if Tookie's death sentence were to be commuted, I don't think it could be changed to life without parole. It would have to be the life sentence that was in effect upon his conviction and I am pretty certain that he would immediately be eligible for parole.

So it is not as simple as some have tried to make it out to be. It isn't just a choice between death and life without parole. It is much more complicated than that.

:sarcasm:

You cannot just deny parole ad infinitum, especially if he has evidence that is strong regarding his "rehabilitation."

That is why the NJ courts finally ordered Trantino paroled after 38 years. Tookie has been in jail for 26 years.

Trantino had little to show that he was rehabilitated except for his talent as an artist. Tookie has done much more in prison to help society so I would think his case for parole would be stronger.

Sure Tookie's crimes were horrid, but consider Trantino - he made 2 cops give him blow jobs and beg for their lives before he shot them in the head.

Sooner or later there would have to be parole.

I think you may be right on this one.

I truly just do not know what the answer is. I've spent so much time thinking about it tonight though, Ithink ultimately is is always better to err on the side of not killing.

Kill Two Cops, Write a Book
Must this be?

Mr. Derbyshire is also an NR contributing editor
February 14, 2002 9:00 a.m.

This week, the case for capital punishment has a local habitation and a name. The habitation is "an undisclosed location in Camden, N.J." and the name is Thomas Trantino. Here's the story.

In the pre-dawn hours of August 26th 1963, two officers on the force of Lodi, N.J. responded to a report of a disturbance at the Angel Lounge on Route 46 in that town. The officers were Sergeant Peter Voto, aged 40, and Patrolman Gary Tedesco, 22. Tedesco, a probationer, was unarmed, so Sgt. Voto went into the bar alone. When, after a while, he hadn't come out, Tedesco went in himself. Inside the bar were two career crooks, Thomas Trantino and Frank Falco, celebrating a recent crime spree. They had grabbed and disarmed Voto after he entered the bar; now they held Tedesco, too. The two police officers were forced to strip to their underwear, taunted and pistol-whipped, then shot in the head. The murderers then fled. Among the police officers who later arrived at the crime scene was Chief Andrew Voto, who slipped in a pool of his brother's blood.

Falco was killed a few days later in a shoot-out with police. Trantino gave himself up, was tried, and sentenced to death. The state Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence in 1965. However, while the inevitable appeals were dragging their weary length through the system, that same court determined that New Jersey's death penalty was unconstitutional, so Trantino's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. That was in 1972. Two years later, Trantino published a book, Lock the Lock, of autobiographical ramblings (for a brief sample, see this). The book's publication naturally caused much distress to the families of the two murdered officers. There is no evidence Trantino lost any sleep over this. He accepted his royalty payments without audible protest.

Being now under a mere life sentence, Trantino was eligible for parole. He duly applied — the first time, in 1979. At the third hearing, in 1982, Trantino got himself a new attorney, a crusading young radical lawyer named Roger Lowenstein. Lowenstein discovered that Trantino, far from being a cynical and manipulative psychopath, was in fact gentle, wise, selfless, and intellectual — a sort of reincarnation of Albert Schweitzer. Lowenstein became determined to win release on parole for this living saint, and one year ago he finally succeeded.


More - http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire021402.shtml

or something a little more liberal?

There are thousands of links to it. I just happened to grab the first one that came up on Google.

by a USSC decision which did not sit in judgment of each individual effected case, nor could it possibly do so.

When granting clemency from a Gubernatorial perspective, the choice of what to commute the sentence to lies with the Governor, no one else.

There is a large difference between the two.

The Tarantino decision was a result of a nationwide Supreme Court ruling, not so with the Williams case.

With the Supreme Court decisition that abolished the death penalty, all sentences were automatically commuted to the next harshest sentence available within the state at the time of conviction.

With a gubernatorial granting of clemency, the sentence is commuted to whatever the governor says it is. That's the law. If The governor wished, he could grant a pardon, commute a sentence to time served, commute a sentence to life without parole, etc. It's the governor's decision, and is not effected by the same laws that created the Trantino situation.