So why was Tookie special? Why not this much fuss for the last 1000?

A serious question here?

We have put to death 1001 people now since the Death Penalty was re-instated in the the USA. Some of these people were demonstrably innocent.

And many more were innocent with that fact unproven if you go by the experience Illinois had with DNA testing of people on death row.

And many of those put to death, innocent or guilty claimed to have been reformed in prison.

Why was Tookie, who unarguably did the monstrous crimes he was sentenced to death for, special enough to cause all this uproar? Why not have fuss like this for people who were railroaded by the system and probably did not do the crime?

The Death Penalty is wrong because the jury system cannot certify that no innocent people are executed, but why don't we fight this hard for each and every person who is executed?

Why didn't we fight this hard for Timothy McVeigh, who seems to have been just as much of a monster as Tookie was?

That's why.

Get outta here...;)

He gets blamed for a lot of shit, doesn't he?


Maybe he's in cahoots with Whitey Ford.


:rofl:

;-)

He does...and I'm a darn Card's fan since I was 8 years-old too :)

In cahoots with Whitey Ford...ALL the Whitey's are in cahoots with each other...it's a conspiracy that's what it is.

Last summer my girlfriend and I went canoing down the Buffalo River in north Arkansas. On the night that we camped out, we listened to a Cardinal game on the radio. My Dad had always told us about how "back in the day," the Cardinals were just about the only MLB team on the radio in the south. With the crackling reception on AM radio and no people within a few miles of us it was a pretty good trip to nostalgia, just need Harry Carey slurring a few players names and it would have been perfect.

Oh, and the Cardinals won.

Nice story :) And the Cardinals won! We always seem to win...until we get to the WS and then it ALL goes wrong for us :cry:

I can speak for myself thank you.

Something about a Nobel Peace Prize nomination?

could be.

After all, George W. Bush is a Nobel Prize Nominee, too.

You DO have a point there.

:toast:

as we all learned during the Terri Schiavo story when the right was parading the Nobel nominee "biologist". We learned then that the Nobel committee never publicizes whom they considered. Just because somebody wrote them a letter (and anyone could..you could) doesn't make one a "nominee". In fact, anyone that uses that claim, exposes themselves as a charlatan.

But the committee only accepts nominations from certain individuals.



http://nobelprize.org/peace/nomination/nominators.html



Williams was nominated by Mario Fehr, a Swiss parliamentarian.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/scandinavia/02/13/norway.nobel/

spell edit

Ain't capitalism wunnerful? But seriously, it's all about the sound byte.

:shrug:

(Note: My post from the Sui Generis thread I seemed to have killed)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5588580--

First, I ain't claiming to be any sort of expert.

But on the whole, across this same 2000 years SG speaks of, hasn't clemency/mercy also been practiced by courts and kings?

What I don't fully get is why we even have any sort of clemency provision at all if it is so rarely--never?--used. Not pardons, not stays of execution, not exoneration based upon new evidence but clemency (as I understand it): coummuting the captial sentence against a convicted murderer. (I don't recall clemency ever being granted in any of the high profile DP cases since the DP's reinstatement. Does it happen in lower-profile DP cases--i.e. well before executtion an national media exposure--and I'm just not aware?)

Again the issue does not have to do w/ evidence of innoncence. That's a whole different route, including stays of execution, etc. Right?

Is remorse the only avenue to clemency? Is it ever even granted at all in capital cases in the U.S.?

I guess the upshot is is that if the DP will always be about the original monsterous act, that clemency really has no place in a modern democracy's legal systems and is an outdated concept that DP suporters should be against not only as a practice but as an executive branch provision.

Are there indeed those that argue this? Reasons?

McVeigh was executed. But yes, I was against putting him to death.

I thought all the DP supporters would be happy today. Didn't you win? Isn't Tookie dead enough for you?

After the 1,000th (a few weeks ago in NC) Wesley Baker was executed. Tookie was 1,002.

So this is even more proof of your point. People don't follow these things closely. And more to the point, people aren't aware of these things because most death row inmates don't have PR teams like Tookie did.

Why was that? Oh hold on...I already know the answer, just like you do.

There are always vigils outside of the deathhouses, letter-writing campaigns to governors, everything that happened this time. Not nearly enough of a "fuss" to actually get the death penalty outlawed in more than twelve states, but people *are* fighting this battle.

Why is there variation in the level of protest for each of the condemned? Well, it's like anything. Some people are better connected than others.

More than averagle. There are always protests and vigils on the part of DP opponents. But not all of them get the same amount of publicity. Some get hardly any. That is something DP opponents can't really control.

I believe there has been a lot of opposition to DP in the past. The lady in Texas who became a born again christian (Executed by Bush). The execution of retarded people. Even the execution against McVeigh, because a lot of people don't think he acted a lone, and he would be worth more alive.

So, humbly, I think its your memory that is faulty. There has always been opposition to the DP.

Karla Faye Tucker was put to death on Feb 3rd, 1988. Before DU was created.

Or am I incorrect about the OP? :)

That is what I was asking.

as the poster suggested! :)

but not about this issue.

I think Mississippi is going to execute some 77 year-old fellow soon...I'll be waiting to see if we have a similar amount of fuss over him.

Murder for hire. Excution set for tonight I think.

Of COURSE we will...NOT!!

Politics as usual

The anti-death penalty movement has to own up to the fact that most American disagree with them.

Until that changes, the movement needs a person as a posterboy who has a valid claim of innocence and someone who is a symapthetic figure who people can identify with. Tookie Williams is not that person.

does that mean 90%, 80% or the real number:

Apr. 2005 Jan. 2003 May 2002

Favor: 65% 64% 65%

Oppose: 29% 31% 26%

(sources: TNS/Washington Post/ABC News)

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=23&did=210#IP

Last time I checked that is a clear majority, well outside of any margin of error. LBJ won 61% of the vote in 1964, and that was called a landslide.

and his allegedly profound turn around from gang-banger to childrens' book author presented more stark contrast than the average murderous schmuck who gets the modern horizontal crucifixion.

Nobody I talked to yesterday at work or out socially were talking about it..and most didn't know who he was.

at DU. It was as bitter as anything I've ever seen on these boards, either in the last year or so I've been posting or in the prior years of lurking.

He wasn't your typical mass murderer. He was a mass murder who could read and write.

How many people are now serving life in prison because they confessed to crimes they didn't commit out of fear of facing the DP if they did not confess?

And McVeigh was a different story. He had to be executed to shut him up. Left alive, he could have said a lot more about the RW terrorists in this country than the government wanted us to know.

protect RW terrorists?

But if there was no federal DP, McVeigh might have one day realized that what he did was wrong, and had something to say about RW terrorism. Not to mention that it prevented him from revealing the identities of others in the plot. Instead, he let the government make a martyr of him.

We lost a valuable intelligence source because of our eagerness to kill. It benefitted no one but the RW terrorists.

EDIT: The RW takeover had been going on a long time before McVeigh's trial. Any attempt by the administration or justice department to delay his execution would have brought howls of condemnation from the RW, which already controlled congress and the senate, by that time. And Clinton could hardly have come out against the execution, having placed himself firmly in the DP camp during the elections.

CIA people and such. :shrug:

WTF? :eyes:

The scary thing is, there ARE people that do believe shit like that.

There is one guy that believe the US gov't used captured UFO technology to pull it off. He believes that the planes were holographic projections around a missle.

:D

The projects to prove the innocence of prisoners on death row have not been extended to the "regular" convict.

Call it "triage" if you will; Those on Death Row will certainly die if their innocence cannot be proven, and the others at least will not certainly die.

But I think that many people are in jail for many crimes that they did not commit in this country, and that it is our national shame that we would rather lock somebody up than actually solve the crime.

The system does not exist to solve crimes; The system exists to convict prisoners.

I wish there were a nomination here at DU for the silliest conspiracy theory statement. The Feds were in such a hurry to silence him that they took SIX YEARS to execute him????

He doesn't come across exactly how the media portrayed him, that's for sure.

Capote died in 1984.

about his guilt/innocence of the crimes for which he was convicted, that the evidence was weak & circumstantial, but I haven't been able to find anything on it... does anyone have any links?

Karla Faye Tucker also convinced many people that she had found the Lord
and had genuinely changed. Her execution caused similar controversy.

As for Timothy McVeigh, he neither claimed innocence nor asked for clemency.
He waived his appeals and went to his death unrepentant and unsympathetic.

All three people, McVeigh, Tucker, and Williams did the crime.

This needs to be about executing NOBODY rather than a popularity contest.

has always been that a) it's murder and b) it's an easy way out. Someone should serve their time and should work on healing themselves. If like Tucker and have a mental problem or emotional problem should be able to work on that and healing them. Than maybe someday try to get out of jail and become an active citizen again. Since I believe in the afterlife and reincarnation I believe that you should help someone if possible so they can change and hopefully not hurt anyone again whether in their next life or afterlife.

and it makes me wonder how he can reconcile his support for Bush in light of Bush's mocking of Tucker's petition for clemency.

You need to educate yourself on the true facts of this case.

That said, you ask "Why all the fuss?" Speaking for myself only, it was the absolute outrage that a steroid-addled serial sexual harasser should have the power of life and death. And yes, I went to a candle-light vigil last night in Westwood, California.

I read everything I could find about this case and I believe he did it. And I believe he is personally responsible for all of the killings his vicious gang did, too. Perhaps you need to educate yourself on THAT?

He belonged in jail.

But nobody belongs on Death Row.

The death penalty was sought for Williams not because of the viciousness of the four murders at issue, but because of his status as a co-founder of the Crips.

Since his conviction was based in large part on the testimony of jailhouse informants who had everything to gain by lying as to what he said, don't you think that introduces some "reasonable doubt"? Unfortunately, Williams was not allowed to present evidence that Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies may have suborned perjury in their attempt to railroad him to death row.

As for the viciousness of the Crips, maybe you need to check out the social circumstances under which they came into existence. To wit, check out what the FBI did to the Black Panthers. Crips came into existence after the Black Panthers were decimated by FBI attacks.

But that does not give excuse for criminality.

We may need a domestic version of same sooner than we think, if NBC's recent revelations about the Pentagon's domestic spying on anti-war organizations is merely a foreshadow of the rolling up and internment of dissenters here. Who will be this generation's Hans and Sophie Scholls?

Sorry to change the subject. While the African American population in Los Angeles is not by any means monolithic in its beliefs, a large part of the population believes that the FBI actually had a hand in arming the Crips and Bloods in their early days. Impossible to prove, I admit, or to dis-prove. But FBI's COINTELPRO program vis-a-vis Black Panthers certainly lends the theory some currency. Interestingly, I've heard the same type of theory bandied about with regard Israel and Hamas, to wit, Israel helped form Hamas as a counter-weight to Arafat's Fatah movement.

All I was getting at is that the main reason prosecutors sought the death penalty for Williams was his affiliation with the Crips, IMHO, and not for the specific crimes with which he was charged.

here on my local news yesterday it was told that this guy was just getting out of jail was innocent of the crime he was committed for. This girl twenty years ago lied that the person raped her when he didn't. So what if he was on death row?

And the governor REFUSED to consider the recantation by the woman who had been raped. Finally, under duress, he commuted the sentence to probation, but the guy still had the rape on his record!

Innocence, it seems, is no defense once you have been legally and correctly convicted.

Finally, based on DNA testing when it became available, he was granted the right to a new trial, and was not subsequently retried.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/case/display_profile.php?id=01

their officials. Schwarzenegger is what he is -- but he was given that authority by the people of California.

Seriously, I've been protesting against Bush militarism for so long, that I had become a single-issue protester for the past couple years.

But Schwarze-nazi sets my teeth on edge, much the way B* does; I can't stand to hear either's voice or see either's face. I voted for the Green candidate in the recall, after having voted not to recall Davis.

Yes, Schwarze-nazi was "given that authority by the people of California." But the recent special election where all 4 of his initiatives were repudiated massively shows that California would take that authority back, were the election held today.

I will be supporting efforts to recall him before next November.

More like Diebold.

There are people who fight against every execution, and who protest every execution. It rarely gets more than a mention on the local news. Maryland executed someone last week. His crime was horrible. His execution solved exactly nothing and made every Marylander complicit in his killing. I am anti-death penalty in all cases, but his blood is on my hands. This execution was a local story, and that's it.

Unfortunately, the death penalty has again become ingrained in this country and state sponsored killing is fairly routine. All this state sponsored killing has done nothing to reduce murder rates. In fact, it contributes to a culture of revenge that just keeps the blood flowing.

It's murder. And people change. Did McVeigh change? Did he try to keep other kids from making bombs?

When the state murders we are all accomplices.

I'm talking like Silence of the Lambs type situations...they find someone with dead bodies stacked in the basement. Or if the police witness the killing such as a hostage situation, or there are pictures made of someone being tortured and killed.

That I would have to be certain the video was not computer generated...

And you can now fake ANYTHING on video in a way that is pretty much undetectable.

And when you look at what it COSTS to execute a prisoner! Wow.

For example, it costs Florida $51 Million per year more to deal with the death penalty cases in its prison system than it would cost to simply keep them incarcerated.

Abolishing the death penalty is cheaper, more humane, sets a better example, and permits the time it might take to correct a judicial mistake.

You would think it was the only thing that mattered in the world. Here and Democracy Now. I'm aginst the death penalty. But 5000 pissing matches among liberals or even among liberals and others is pointless. There must be a better way to spend our energy. And this case is not the one that was where that energy should have been spent. I don't like lost pointless causes at the wrong time. Probably why I'm not in the Hillary 2008 camp. :evilgrin:

This case has divided us uselessly.

To add to my list of ignores, seriously there was some really vile crap being spewed out by posters who still havent made it off of my "Kill tookie" ignore list..

highlight the case. The fact that people opposed to the death penalty generally, opposed it in the specific case of Tookie, only proves that they are consistent.

I think if you ask any death penalty opponent, they will tell you that every person killed by the state is a travesty. We wish the meda would highlight all of those cases so that we had a voice in each instance.

The real question is why did this case mean so much to the pro-death penalty crowd. I venture to say that b/c of the grievous crimes committed by Tookie, they felt emboldened to voice what would otherwise be an unpopular view on DU. I suspect that there is some latent racism lingering in their as well.

Even some yahoo from the most backwater stinkhole knows of the Crips and Bloods.

Lots have gangbangers have gone straight. If Tookie had been some peon soldier for the Crips he wouldn't have merited any coverage outside of a paragraph or two.

Death penalty,gay rights,abortion or whatever,the debate never ends,just something,some person,place or thing,brings it to whitehot attention.

http://www.govspot.com/lists/populousstates.htm

Hollywood is in California, along with all it's celebrities. Sad fact is, news stations are more likely to cover an event if celebrities are assocaited with an event.
Also, state borders matter, in terms of intensity of media coverage. The execution got huge coverage here in the Bay Area, on the local news, radio etc. San Quentin is about 10 miles due west of where I'm at.

Most Populous States

State 2000 Pop.
California 33,871,684
Texas 20,851,820
New York 18,976,457
Florida 15,982,378

I remember watching the McVeigh coverage and being disgusted by the blood lust. But between that event and this one, there has been an increasing need to get active on many fronts. We are more practiced now, or at least, it seems that way.

Although his "rehab" was impressive. He found worth in his life.
And I don't believe in state-sanctioned murder ... of anyone.