heavydog

This morning at 08.01GMT Stanley “Tookie” Williams was killed by lethal injection. See the BBC story here.

26 years ago, he was accused of murdering 4 people, a convenience store owner called Albert Owens and an elderly Taiwanese couple and their daughter at the motel they owned, for 26 years he has claimed he is innocent. He denounced gang life while serving his sentence on death row and his written a number of books on the subject - mostly childrens books - about how gang life is the wrong path to take. Teachers and parents use the book as a source of material to further explain how gang life is the wrong way. Tookie, who co-founded the Crips gang in Los Angeles in 1971, which has now spread to many other states and even has copy-cat gangs in South Africa, was even nominated for a nobel peace prize in 2001. Tookie has always been deeply regretful for his involvement in founding the Crips and it’s subsequent spread and increase in members.

On Monday 12th December 2005, the US Supreme Court refused a stay of execution, as had California’s Supreme Court and a federal appeals court.

California Govenor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, denied clemency after “studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences”. (You can read higlights of his statement here.)

What a fucking tradegdy. In this day and age, for the death penalty to still be a feasible means of punishment is barbaric.

For 26 years Tookie denined that he was responsible for the murders. How can the anyone say, with 100% certainty, that he was definately guilty? Read through Tookies website and you’ll see how the court case was nothing less than a farce, employing racist tactics (who’d have thought that 26 years ago, racism would have been rife in a public court) and other “reprehensible and unconstitutional” means.

Could Tookie have been of more use if he was kept alive? If his sentence was reduced to life without parole? If he had written more books, more teachings, sent more letters to kids who are still unsure about their life in South Central and helped them to decided that ganglife wasn’t for them? If he *did* commit the murders, how many lives has he actually saved since he was convicted by turning kids away from crime and gang life?

Who knows? And I guess no one ever will.

But maybe Tookie won’t neccesarily have died in vein. Perhaps the media circus around this whole event, the fact a FUCKING MOVIE STAR had to make a judgment on someones life, the protests and the backing from Hollywood celebraties to commute his sentence, might bring the subject of the legality, the issues surrounding it and the unconstitutional-ness of the Death Sentence to the fore.

I hope that someone clears Tookies of the crimes, won’t that fuck up the so-called justice that American dishes out.