Doing Away With Tookie
Twelve days from now, unless Governor Schwarzenegger commutes his death sentence, California will put Stanley Williams to death by lethal injection.
Every route to clemency has been closed to the convicted murderer nicknamed ‘Tookie,’ including the California Supreme Court, federal trial and appeals courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. From a legal point of view there’s very little to debate.
But for me, the story is not one of whether or not the rules have been followed, as surely they have, but one of what the purpose is of death penalties and prisons. They are connected, these points of view, for if you believe in prisons as punishments then the death penalty is just the most severe available retribution. But if you believe that prisons must primarily rehabilitate or they fail the civilizations that create them, then the death penalty crumbles, because it is irrevocable and rules out the improvement of the incarcerated.
A case can be made that Tookie is well down that rehabilitative ro…