Stanley 'Tookie' Williams died at 12:36 a.m. PST

End of message.

:( Damn Arnold and others who wouldn't listen! Someday people will know the truth either way.

I don't mean to be flippant or callous, but I was under the impression that these things happen at 12:01, and that it only took 5-10 minutes for a pronouncement. Did they miss the vein the first few times? Or are there preliminaries that they don't do until after midnight?

I haven't heard too much on what happened. Might've happened or he could have veins that are hard to get. My mom has that problem and I did once when I had to have some blood drawn for a test.

That's all I know.

then expected from the reports on CNN. A witness said that she thought she heard Tookie ask the doctor if he was doing it right.
Could this have been a sign that he wasn't suppose to die?

the witnesses are probably closely checked
for audio recording devices, etc

May the healing here at DU begin.

Seriously. Why should a multiple murderer "rest in peace"?
Not that I believe in an after-life.

Look, he killed four people for no reason at all. I go back and forth on the death penalty, but nobody on DU seems to give a damn about those people. I guess because they've been dead for a long time now, they don't matter. I don't get it.

Then I resign from the human race.

I never did walk in Tookies shoes. I refuse to judge him.

Rice, Rumsfeld, Rove....need I go on?

After all, you haven't walked in their metaphorical shoes, either.

He's a human being who spent many years trying to insure that others didn't follow in his footsteps.

The mere fact that he's a human earns him the right to a peaceful rest.

BUT: Do you REALLY believe this?
Stalin? Mao? Pol Pot? Hitler? Himmler? Tojo? Eichmann?
Bundy? the Green River Killer? The bombers of Pan Am 103?

You're a better man than I, Gunga Din.

And I wish it would go away forever.

That said, would you be saying the things you are if one of the victims were your child, or any type of family member?

While the death penalty is wrong, so is murdering 4 people.

What's done is done and we can't change it, but let's not immortalize a murderer just because he saw the error of his ways.

Killing him doesn't bring the dead back to life.

The death penalty is nothing more than state-supported vengeance. I don't believe in vengeance.

He's still a human being.

Considering that I had a sister raped and murdered in Iowa twenty years ago, I have had to go through that kind of ultimate soul searching. Do I want death, a death that is inflicted out of vengance, or do I want to stop the senseless slaughter. The decision was never really in my hands since Iowa is not a DP state. However the soul searching that the incident prompted made me think deeply, and despite the anger, despite the pain, I still come down against state sanctioned killing every single day of the week.

RIP Tookie, for you were a human. RIP for Tookie's victims, for they were also human.

And let us remove the power of death from the state. It isn't right and it isn't moral.

Seriously.