Would Tookie have converted against gangs if he never got caught?

I wonder if Tookie would be preaching against gang life if he had not been caught and convicted? He has done his literary work from behind bars. He does not admit to the 4 murder slayings which I tend to believe he is guilty.

If he was never caught, what do you think he would be doing today?

and anybody who thinks otherwise, i have a bridge to sell you.

any point in killing him?

justice. From a cerebral sense, I don't support state execution....but then, I peel back the onion, and see the rest of the story, the innocent, slaughtered citizens. The Death Penalty has been installed per law, as the identified final consequence for committing such social crimes. Now, there are thousands upon thousands of murderers with a life sentence or less to serve in prison......The Death Penalty is reserved for the worst. It is about setting boundaries I guess.

...with the consequences of that path until his life is ended. Some people change spontaneously and some have to be corrected before realizing the error of their ways. However, his actions were so classically heinous our society deems that he will not receive a second chance.

PB

chance. why do you think that is?

PB

for the Nobel peace prize too.

PB

The committee must be a diverse group.

Here is the entry from their site:

Year Nominator Nominee(s) Motivation

1939 /Brandt/ Hitler/ Hitler was the leader of the German Nationalist Socialist Party.

check out the nomination procedure:

The Nominators – Peace

Right to submit proposals for the Nobel Peace Prize, based on the principle of competence and universality, shall by statute be enjoyed by:

1. Members of national assemblies and governments of states;
2. Members of international courts;
3. University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;
4. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
5. Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
6. Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1) and
7. Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

The Nobel Peace Prize may also be awarded to institutions and associations.

Prize-Awarder: The Norwegian Nobel Committee, Oslo
==================================================

That being the case, your nobel prize comment seems out of place.

...supposed nomination. The committee DOES NOT NOMINATE. They chose from among nominees. The nomination process is super loose.

Check out the official Nobel site:

http://nobelprize.org/nomination_facts.html

Has X been nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize?
Information about the nominations, investigations, and opinions concerning the award is kept secret for fifty years.

Who may nominate:

The Nominators – Peace
Right to submit proposals for the Nobel Peace Prize, based on the principle of competence and universality, shall by statute be enjoyed by:


1. Members of national assemblies and governments of states;
2. Members of international courts;
3. University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;
4. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
5. Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
6. Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1) and
7. Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
----------
That is a hell of a lot of people who can make a nomination. Notice that the Nobel committee does NOT release names of nominees.

A few professors have claimed to have nominated him. That means that they wrote a letter to the prize committee. THAT IS ALL THAT IT MEANS - NOTHING MORE. But the Tookie Kookies have taken advantage of the fact that most people confuse a nomination with an award. (See this movie - Nominated for 10 Academy Awards - Didn't win one. - Movie stinks)

Therefore, let's kill him. That will show him the error of his ways for sure.

(Sarcasm)

Sheesh! Do crack, maybe. But please. He even bitched out the other two men with him for not going ahead with the robbery at their first "stop".

PB

Your right. No one "forced" him to do anything.

But try this experiment. Get a dog, any dog, but let's make it a pit bull or German Shepard. Now raise it from birth
to know noting but violence and pain and suffering, don't give it any hope for having what other dogs have. Then turn
it loose. Oh, and make the dog very hungry.

When it kills the chickens and the other dogs and whatever else it can get hold of, then we can shoot it for being
a bad dog, one with no hope of redemption. And you can say "nobody FORCED it to kill those chickens".

Now before you kill that dog, you put it in a pen (so that it won't kill any more chickens), then you teach it that
it doesn't need violence to eat, that some people will even show it some kindness. Now it shows no tendency to be
what it once was... but we kill it anyway. Because it killed in the past.

Yup, you are right. Nobody FORCED him to kill. Therefore we should kill him. Eye for an eye.

parents (blah, blah, blah).

Really, what is your point? He did the crime. He spent the time behind bars to improve himself and to help others.
Is there no one that deserves redemption in your eyes? And what would he have to do to redeem himself? And how
does killing him in a few hours going to help anyone?

IMHO he'd still be a gangster. Excuse me, a gangsta.

I would wager he would have been killed by some other gang-banger. Would he have turned against gangs? Highly unlikely. Would he have helped broker the peace treaty? Quite possibly.

happening is very, very high. Another gang wanting a trophy......

I think most people who do horrible things and then reform do so because something extreme has caused them to see the light- imprisonment, injury, illness, loss of someone they care about...

To be honest - he'd probably be dead from gang violence. Irony is not lost here.

He wouldn't have repented, but not necessarily because he is rotten to the core or some such stuff.
I have a theory that a lot of the reason so many prison inmates or felons find religion is this:
Society has rejected them, written them off, told them they're worthless, no good, beyond hope or help or salvation. Heck, what do you think the death penalty or even a life sentence is saying?

But, religion tells them they can repent and be forgiven that someone, God, Allah, Jesus, etc loves them, considers them precious. I think that can be a very powerful message for some one who has nothing else. And ironically, the same mentality that makes people join gangs and do stupid/evil stuff can also make them turn their lives over to God/Jesus, etc.

Tookie came from less than nothing and founded a gang to give purpose to himself and others. I know it seems odd to most of us in our nice comfortable homes that purpose involves robbing, killing, etc. But few of us can even imagine what his childhood was like.

Maybe I am way off base here, but I think regardless of whether you believe Tookie deserves to die for his crimes, or has been redeemed or can be forgiven, etc.-I think we need to at least try and understand him.

actually change through our lifetime. We have that capacity...well some of us. In the process, we let go of things that are no longer useful to us, like learned behavior that is no longer useful, false beliefs, harmful habits, sick people, etc. We learn more from our mistakes than from any success. Imagine that?

therefore irrelevant. He is what he is as of this moment. That path ends after tonight. That much is known. What we don't know, we will never know, because the system killed him. The 'what if' will never justify that.

However, I will say that for some people, it takes something drastic such as getting caught for them to be able to see the light. Of course, I'm not saying that everyone who says they've changed it sincere. Whether or not Tookie is sincere, I can't say. I do think, however, that he probably wouldn't be speaking out against gangs were he not caught.

That said, I'm against the DP across the board.

don't get caught often outgrow them as they grow up and mature, or their first term in prison often straightens them out. So it's hard to know how Tookie would have turned out if he hadn't been caught.

Love is the answer to all.

had he never been caught.

shot to death like his victims by now.

Ironically, the state proably gave him many more years of extra life.

and do some soul searching, he might be able to realize he got extra minutes.

would have lasted maybe five more years if he was lucky. He would have been killed in the 80s LA gang wars (See "Colors" for the Hollywood version).

Tookie, alive, does some small part in fighting the gang problem. He's not the great leader some crack him up to be, because if he was Gandhi or MLK or Cesar Chavez, things would've gotten better on the streets and in CDC. They haven't. But he's still a small asset to the currently LEADERLESS struggle against gangs.

Tookie, dead, will look great on t-shirts just like Tupac. Snoop and others will release songs glorifying the "gangsta" side of his memory. His image will become part of the complex of machismo and folly that draws young men into gangs, of which the threat of death is a PRO, not an anti, argument.

Listen up here, better-off DUers: please don't attribute your rational sense of self-preservation (which might be why you approve of executions and such!) to poor boys growing up in the inner-city. Do you think tough laws and mean streets and increasingly lethal police practices steer people AWAY from the "thug life"! The risk of death actually compels boys to join gangs, just as it compels others--and indeed some of the same--to go to war. They are afraid to look like cowards if they don't step up, and without prospects of college and career, the respect of their friends is all they have. So they line up to engage in almost any risky behavior. If gang life was less lethal (as it was in the 50s and 60s) it would hold much less appeal (ditto).

The gang situation will worsen. And ultimately this will empower the people who are killing him, really--not the state of California or its people but an apparatus of criminal justice and law enforcement that has already become TOO POWERFUL here.

Death bed conversions make me sick.

I have absolutely NO sympathy for this CRIMINAL.

I am agains the death penalty in all instances, tho - but I won't loose sleep over his passing - HE certainly didn't care when HE committed the crime!

He still refuses to debrief the police about the gangs. He still holds to the code of "don't snitch". He says it goes against his ethics. So he is still LOYAL to the gang.

were self-fullfilling......The theme remains gang-life and violence. He just masked the propaganda under a naive title........He was continuing his recruitment in my opinion. It's all about "him" and his control. Like you said, he never came clean or helped law enforcement shore up the streets to prevent gang violence. Everything was on HIS terms........he owned no responsibility for his actions. I never heard an amends.

though that's not uncommon for gang members who survive to an age where they mature to the point they realize the idiocy of a criminal lifestyle. I'm guessing active members of gangs past the age of 40 are an extreme rarity.

post is ridiculous. You seem to think that people never change. Well they do. I guess you are so perfect, eh. Never did a thing wrong in your life? I guess you are better than God, who forgave David for causing the death of his lover's husband. I guess you are better than God who chose Paul who had crucified Christians but later became one of the greatest men of the Bible. I think some of the posts are simply disgusting. I think the venom in this case is so great because the person involved is black and he, in the mind of some, deserves no mercy. I am a Christian and believe in forgiveness. I guess black people should never forget all the bad things that have been done to them. Maybe blacks should start having your attitude. Sickening.

You can use a :hug: