Tookie deserves to die

and so do most death row inmates. But the death penalty isn't about them, it is about us. Killing people in our name makes us as guilty as the people being killed. My opposition to the DP isn't due to the probability we have executed innocents, though I think we have. My opposition to the DP isn't based on race or class, though I think both biases have worked their way into DP cases. My opposition to the DP is based on the simple fact that killing is wrong whether the state does it or the citizens of the state do it. Tookie deserves to die if one believes that an eye for an eye is the only just code. But before an eye for an eye, God spared Cain. Cain was exiled but not killed. Tookie should be imprisioned but not killed.


Tookie is an unrepentent murdering thug whose life work before prison makes minorities and poor people less safe. More black people have died at the hands of his gang since its founding than the Klan has killed in the same years. His gang is one reason millions of people in this country live in drug infested rathole neighborhoods. He has done nothing to help eliminate his creation. Tookie's life should be spared but only because all lives should be spared. Let us not forget also that his victims were minorities too. He killed people who came to this country due to the unspeakable horror our foreign policy brought to their doorsteps. Then they were mowed down by thugs seeking money for a quick fix. Killing Tookie won't bring them back, but keeping him in prison for the rest of his natural life may well serve to save the next clerk's life. Tookie isn't innocent, and the people who wish him dead aren't racist.

There's a difference between whether somone deserves to die and whether the government should actually kill them.

I'm not a Christian, but being treated better than you deserve is at the center of the concept of divine grace. People who are into that religion should consider that.

It is against the Catholic tradition though for whatever reason abortion rates higher on their list of sins. Several mainline Protestant denominations have gone on record as opposed to the DP.

because I feel they are both murder.

However, the death penalty is done in my name and makes me a murderer. Abortion is a private choice and has nothing to do with me. And, were I to get pregnant in my mid fifties, I would probably commit murder and ask forgiveness later. And I want to be able to make that decision and not ask some judge.

My words, my terms..not trying to talk anybody into them.

in my opinion, but I have no right to ACT on that opinion, and neither does the government. I'm just not comfortable with a system that can't make schools that work, roads that work, or an election system that works getting to decide who dies.

I don't think anyone on Earth has the right to decide that. Isn't that our complaint about the murderers in the first place?

Yes, it's expensive to keep people in prison. Perhaps if we locked up less people for consensual crimes and tried to implement some kind of intelligent system to have those incarcerated for actual harm-inducing crimes WORK and support themselves the way they'd have to in the outside world...(shrug)

And I have familial and personal experience with the police and the justice system that makes me POSITIVE they shouldn't decide who lives or who dies, or even who gets to be imprisoned, or who gets medicine and who doesn't. Or whether water is wet, for that matter. (sigh)

make them work in service to those whom they've harmed? Many people want the DP because they want criminals punished (more than being in prison).

The interview was from the 60s and he'd been working there since it opened in the 30s.

He said that when he started the inmates actually respected the guards and took their punishments because they had been "caught fair and square". Things changed when the drug laws changed, he claimed. Inmates started to feel like their harsh sentences for selling and using drugs were punative and unfair and they started to treat the guards like enemies. That's also when the gangs started and made prison life even more miserable for everyone.

I don't really have an opinion on Tookie in particular, and I'm not advocating legalizing dangerous drugs like heroin - I am saying that our system needs a top to bottom shake-up and this is just a symptom of that larger looming issue.

if we have executed innocents and that your opposition isn't due to that possibility. On that possibility alone, there should be no death penalty.

we can have the death penalty? Even if all the people executed are guilty, I still don't favor a death penalty.

A civilized society doesn't embrace an 'eye for an eye' criminal justice system.

"A civilized society doesn't embrace an 'eye for an eye' criminal justice system. "

"A civilized society doesn't embrace an 'eye for an eye' criminal justice system."

Hmmmm...that doesn't seem correct. Attempting to make people bear an amount of punishment as equal as possible to their crime isn't inconsistent with a civilized society.

If you're making the jump from capital punishment to murder then there's no way to have this discussion. All I'm saying is that there's no clear cut contradiction between being civilized (IE: industry, spoken and written languages, etc.)and having a death penalty.

and their record on human rights. I don't think that would put them up there in the echelons of "civilized" society.

Here's the company we're keeping:
In 2004, 97 per cent of all known executions took place in China, Iran, Viet Nam and the USA.


Here's the path the rest of the civilized world is on:

Abolitionist and retentionist countries
Over half the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
Amnesty International's latest information shows that:

* 86 countries and territories have abolished the death penalty for all crimes;
* 11 countries have abolished the death penalty for all but exceptional crimes such as wartime crimes;
* 25 countries can be considered abolitionist in practice: they retain the death penalty in law but have not carried out any executions for the past 10 years or more and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions,

making a total of 122 countries which have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

* 74 other countries and territories retain and use the death penalty, but the number of countries which actually execute prisoners in any one year is much smaller.

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-facts-eng

This is kind of slippery but does this means we have a standard by which to refer to China and Iran as 'uncivilized'? That doesn't seem like something we're likely to do.
I'm not 100% death penalty but a bunch of figures from Amnesty International (who I generally respect) doesn't change the philosophical basis of my question.

or be honest. I put "civilized" in quotes for a specific reason. As you well know, China has an abysmal record on human rights. People who try to leave forced factory labor are executed, and women are FORCED against their will to have abortions.

And, you didn't pose a philosophical question. You assert that certain people deserve the ultimate penalty. Deserve and whether we should carry that out as a CIVILIZED society are two completely different issues.

What is it that all of those other countries apparently understand or realize that we don't? Or, are you proud to stand in the company of China and Iran?

My assertion wasn't that some people deserve the death penalty. My assertion was whether or not man has the right to seek justice by requiring an offender to pay an equal, or as close to it as possible, amount for his crime. Does man have the right to determine waht crime is? Does man have the right to seek justice? Why?

penalty is wrong under any circumstance and that killing is wrong whether the state or the citizens of the state do it. I oppose it even for a person guilty beyond a doubt. For the people that support the death penalty, if they took the one point that someone could be innocent, I would think they would be against it. So many in favor of the death penalty believe in an 'eye for an eye' and they will never change their minds on that point. Many of the same people who support the death penalty are anti-abortion and yet on the other side of the coin many who oppose the death penalty are pro-choice. The anti-abortion people accuse the pro-choice people of murder. It is all a double edged sword.

My opposition mainly results from the fact that innocent people have been put to death.

myself. Many deserve it (or worse) but should we do it? Shouldn't we be better? Not for their sake but for OUR sake.

And really, anyone who supports the death penalty, is denying or dismissing the fact that application of the death penalty is racially biased. Does that make one a racist? Denial?

More black people have died at the hands of his gang since its founding than the Klan has killed in the same years. His gang is one reason millions of people in this country live in drug infested rathole neighborhoods.

His gang is not a reason for millions of people living in rathole neighborhoods. Racism is the reason for that.

As far as your comment comparing him to the KKK, his gang has not done nearly the damage to the Black community as the KKK has. Taking the number of deaths in recent years the KKK has caused (the ones we know about) and using this as a statistic to prove your point, is intellectually dishonest. BTW, do you have actual numbers on hate crime group deaths?

No doubt, gangs do damage to communities but why confound other issues with this fact? Gangs are created in response to oppression and racism. Open up opportunities to oppressed and marginalized groups of people and you'll have fewer gang members.

and I know who is the reason my students fear being shot. Tookie's gang has made a bad situation much, much worse. The students I teach are unlikely to ever meet a Klansman but might well meet a gang banger. Racism put them in lousy neighborhoods. The Crips made the lousy neighborhoods more lousy.

And the gangs make it more lousy.

That's different than saying that gangs are one reason people are living in ratholes. ;)

Your reply is 'far' more civilized than mine would have been to this person. ...comparing the Klan with LA gangs is um...well quite beyond the pale.

:mad: :mad: :mad:


(begins chanting, "calm blue water" "calm blue water" "calm blue water")

I can barely imagine a more awful plague upon our minority youngsters than that which gangs make them face every day. Honestly it is sometimes hard to imagine the Klan didn't invent the Crips just for this purpose. I have personally been to the funeral of students who have died due to gang violence. I haven't been to a single funeral of a student killed by a Klansman. The Crips helped ruin the lives of two generations of urban youth while killing a huge number of those people. The Klan currently could only dream of such power now.

cite your sources.

David Duke has shown that most racists aren't sheet-wearing, cross-burning, confederate flag-waving, NASCAR-watching, pot-bellied toothless yahoos.

Hurricane Katrina reponse shows that indifference kills more than any gang ever could.

I'll tell you what. Go ahead and post some deaths caused by the Klan and I will find double as many caused by the Crips. It isn't even close. Spend some time in one of the places the Crips call home. Teach in one of those schools. Then tell us they don't kill black kids.

IMO, white supremacy groups do far more damage to the Black community than do gangs. They spread hate and violence towards Blacks which influences societal attitudes towards Blacks that in turn, permeate into our policies and programs on a systemic level.

White supremacist hate groups also beat and kill people thus inflict violence on an individual level. The KKK has morphed into other hate groups, so to use that one group as an example is not intellectually honest.

Comparing white supremacist hate groups, a faction of the radical right and make the claim that the damage they do to the Black community to be worse than the damage Black gangs do, is absurd.

For more info on white supremacy hate groups:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/history.jsp

The Center's Intelligence Project is dedicated to monitoring hate groups and extremist activity in the U.S.

It also publishes the Intelligence Report, a quarterly magazine updating law enforcement, the media, and the public on the activity it investigates.

The Project has also established law enforcement training to help officers identify and respond to hate crimes.

Originally called Klanwatch, the Intelligence Project was created in 1981 in response to an incident two years earlier. During a peaceful march in Decatur, Alabama, Klan members attacked civil rights activists. Curtis Robinson, a black man, shot a Klansman in self-defense. When Robinson was convicted of assault with intent to murder by an all-white jury, the Center appealed his conviction and brought its first civil suit against the Klan.

During the suit, Center investigators discovered evidence suggesting a resurgence of Klan activity. Klanwatch was established to take action against the Klan – and the cross burnings, beatings, shootings, and other violence that authorities largely ignored.

Though the Project's original purpose was to gather information about the Klan, it evolved into much more. Today, the Project monitors hate crimes and domestic hate groups – including neo-Nazi, racist Skinheads, Christian Identity adherents, black separatists, and extremist militias – making it an acknowledged expert on the wide spectrum of U.S. hate activity.

Because the most violent hate groups monitored by the Intelligence Project are no longer associated with the Klan, the program's name changed in 1998 from Klanwatch to the Intelligence Project.

The Drips have severl thousand members and there are MAYBE several humdred members nationwide of WP groups. You're giving WP groups way too much credit here.

My respect and admiration for you knows no bounds. I personally am so far beyond too chicken to even think of going into that kind of school to try to make a difference (not that I'm a teacher anyway). You are an inspiration and an incredible blessing to the lives of your students and to those of us you share your knowledge with.

And what you say is so sad and, given your experience, so believable. That the Crips could be even more damaging to the lives of African-Americans than the Klan is just awful. It would have broken the hearts of Martin Luther King Jr. and of all the civil rights workers in the '50s and '60s (and beyond) that such a thing would come to pass, but it has, in so many neighborhoods around the country. Of course it's because of the legacy of the Klan that minority kids are in the position they're in, which makes them vulnerable to the effects of gangs. But that doesn't make what gang leaders are doing right now okay.

Gangs have infested our poor neighborhoods rendering them all but unliveable in many instances. It would be absurd to state racism isn't a problem or that the Klan is dead. But it is the gangs who are the daily obstacle to life and education in all too many inner cities.

"...comparing the Klan with LA gangs is um...well quite beyond the pale."

How So? Their both semi-organized criminal organizations that perpetrate violence upon their enemies. They both have their reasons for existence and both seek a superior position in the world. How is this an unreasonable comparison?

I think the only thing unreasonable in that guys post was the expectation that just because someone is black then they automatically should care about other people who happen to be black. Like he was implying that one could expect the Klan to kill black folks but it's surprising that a black gang would kill black folks.

During it height of power in the USA, during the 1920's, the Klan was able to control elections from Portland OR, to Portland ME., and many points in between.

For an interesting look at whites opposing the Klan in Mississippi in those days, read "Rising Tide" by John Barry. The topic of the book is about the great 1927 flood, but to set the stage he give the national historical background in which the Klan figured prominently.

"his gang has not done nearly the damage to the Black community as the KKK has."

I think most black folks that live in neighboorhoods threated with gang violence and rampant crime would disagree with you there. I'm pretty sure none of them feel a threat by the KKK. The KKK barely exists these days and when it does rear it's head it's not even a small shadow of it's former self.

What's done the most damage to the Black community?

His statement about this is false and not supported with any evidence. Holding up a detoriating hate group that has morphed into other white supremacy groups is flawed.

If any comparison is made between the two, it should be Black gangs vs. White Supremacy Hate groups. That at least would be a little bit more legitimate although I don't really agree with that premise either.

You don't think most Blacks would agree? Based on what? Your white perspective? Or do you have actual info from the Black community on this?

Hmmm...making an assumption there that I'm not Black, huh?
I think the problem here is that people want to give one group (Gangs) some sort of moral credence to exist while not granting a similar right to similarly violent groups like the KKK, etc. I don't find either one to be legitimate or worthy of easy consideration.

"You don't think most Blacks would agree? Based on what? Your white perspective? Or do you have actual info from the Black community on this?"

You'll be pleased to know I just went on a walk through my community and asked every Black person I saw this question. My informal poll ("Do you as a member of the Black Community feel more threatened by the Ku Klux Klan or by gangs when it comes to protecting your health, property adn the stability of the commmunity?").

My suspicions were confirmed.

And I wondered if I might be a bit of a hypocrite. I thought that being "born again" wasn't good enough for Karla Fay Tucker to avoid execution (but at least I didn't mock her like her fellow Christian George W). Then after hearing the Tookie Williams story, I think his sentence should be commuted.

The more I think about it, it's not hypocritical at all - sure, Tucker may have become a better person, but that's not the same as what Williams has done. He took a life, but how many lives has he saved by his anti-gang message? How many children will not join a gang and kill/be killed because of his books?

I say that works have a lot more impact than faith. Even though I'm not religious, I've always believed that the Book of James in the Bible is often overlooked. Faith alone will not save you, because faith without works is dead. Just saying "I'm saved!" isn't enough - good deeds go a lot further.

If someone makes actual retribution to society, through service to the community, it's worth more than words. (Actions speak louder than words).

But, it's difficult to really measure the effects of reparative justice. How would they decide if someone has done enough?

I'd really have a difficult time, though I think I'd err on the side of clemency. It'd still be tough, though.

"He took a life, but how many lives has he saved by his anti-gang message? How many children will not join a gang and kill/be killed because of his books?"

Sadly, probably none. He has had very little impact. Hisw books sell for shit and until a few months ago hardly anyone even knew who he was, Jaime Foxx movie notwithstanding.

but it seems like filling yourself up with hatred and the belief that you can determine who should live and who should die may diminish you in a number of other ways. We aren't talking about someone who's actively murdering anyone...this is on who has been caught. Now we're just talking about really noble concepts like retribution and punishment. This takes us back to the great old days of eyes for eyes and all that jazz.

Part of why many of us object to putting people like Tookie to death isn't because of the weight and stain on his souls...it's to prevent that sort of weight and stain from appearing on our own.

And why can't we talk more about things caused by people who want us all to die; and none of us has killed in such a nasty way or anything else vile?!!

I get tired of certain cause celeb death row inmates taking a lot of media spotlight. In a large part they take away from the real problems that exist with the death penalty and its use in the first place.

I really don't care about 'repenting' or 'finding God' in jail. If you have murdered, you are scum and deserve a fitting punishment (and yes in some cases, they do deserve to die)...but it's simply not in the Government's hands to decide who lives and who dies. This is the problem with the death penalty - it's capricious, arbitrary, and completely innefecient. Not one study has proven it to be a deterrent in any sense. If that was the case, MN would be a very dangerous state, while TX should be a lot safer.

And of course, the other reasons you stated are also valid. If we can reason that the wrong person will go to jail every so often, we can likely guess the same is the case with death row. We can't reverse death.

amen!!!!!

I have stayed well out of this argument. My personal belief is that the death penalty is wrong because the state shouldn't kill people. I also believe it is wrong because it is a cop-out for the convicted; if I had to choose between death or life in prison, I'd choose death in a heartbeat. Death is an escape.

That having been said, two things:

"Tookie is an unrepentent murdering thug..."

My understanding of the whole reason why people want him granted clemency is the fact that he is, in fact, repentant, and has done a whole lot of work to undo the terrible acts of his youth. In other words, I take issue with your use of the word "unrepentant."

"He has done nothing to help eliminate his creation."

Again - unless I have completely and utterly missed the point - I don't see this as an accurate statement, given the work he has done to try and end what he began.

He has said that it would "rip the dignity" out of him if he told police about crimes that he knew about and the inner working of the Crips. He is still loyal to the gang. In that loyalty he shows that he has NOT in fact repented. By helping some of his gang stay out of jail, he helps them to continue to commit crimes.

He can't make up for that with some ghost-written books and a few TV appearances.

to my knowledge, Tookie has not admitted guilt.
{the four homicides}

an immense amount of evidence that he in fact committed the murders. As to his work with gangs. He has steadfastly refused to give the police any information on the Crips. I won't deny he is trying to keep kids out of gangs but for me true repentence would entail turning over evidence which he won't do.

And shouldn't be allowed to decided when a person should die. Especially, as they are incompetent, considering mistakes can be made.

You'll get no argument from me with this one.