For him, or for us?
So the Governor of California and the U.S. Supreme Court have both decided not to grant clemency to Stanley Williams. He's the ex-Crip who was convicted of three murders back in 1981 and sentenced to die.
(tangentally, there's something surreal about Arnold Schwarzenegger deciding whether people live or die. Yeah yeah, I realize that ten or twenty people just shouted "Arnold didn't decide, a jury of his peers decided," but whatever. There's still something messed up about it and you know it. It's not even about the Terminator thing, but more about the guy who did this as a solid career move).
There's one word in the prison system that I'd like to focus on:
It's called the Department of Corrections. Now, you could arguably put forth that the Corrections moniker dates back to a time when we deluded ourselves as a society that most criminals can and would be properly adjusted by their prison time and would all emerge as changed people, ready to become a helpful, productive member of society. That ain't never gonna be true. The vast majority of guys inside don't ever want to change, they just want to not get caught. And the important part is that collectively, that's what we believe and what we've come to accept.
But here's a guy who actually has been rehabilitated- no thanks to us, really. In spite of our own dismissive attitude toward felons in general, in spite of all of our beliefs that nobody ever does, he fixed himself. He literally fulfilled the old prison ethos of "repaying his debt to society," what with the enormous amounts of work to further the pro-youth, anti-gang movement in this country. Much more than most of us who sit around reading internet blogs, making an occasional comment or two at the news about how gangs suck. Whatever debt he had to us as a society, he's paid.
Double whammy, biznitch!
Now, dude can't pay back the people he killed, no matter what he does. He can't be coming out of prison, not for the rest of his life. So if he actually is doing some good while he's in jail, then why are we killing him? We have to decide that- if we're killing him for us, then we shouldn't be killing anybody. The death penalty doesn't exist to make the rest of us feel better. If we're killing him for him, then it's a giant waste. He's going to be a much worse person dead than he is alive.
From a practical standpoint: dude's a killer, but at least now he's serving a decent purpose and Americana at large is getting something back from him. We're getting our $50,000 a year's worth out of this guy. We sure don't get anything back from most of the other guys on the row, and we spend even more than that annually on all of them.
And don't be saying that a man like that can't change. We just elected a dude to the office of President who is a confessed alcoholic and cocaine addict. But he said that he's a different man- and we believed him so much that we elected him twice. I only mention this because I have a feeling that the group of people who really, really want Tookie to die might bear a significant amount of overlap with the group who voted Republican.
As a society, we believe that people can change. Each of us has to believe other people can in order to believe that we ourselves can change, too.
One of the things I can't get over is looking around and seeing how quickly people cast one another off; we can form an opinion, close the books, walk away and never consider revising it. So at what point do we stop wanting him to die because he deserves it and start wanting him to die because we want revenge? Did we kill him because we should have, or because we wanted to?
There's also a small part of me that kind of hopes there are riots when they execute Tooks. I wasn't in LA for the last set, and hey, I like to burn stuff as much as the next guy. So thanks, Tookie: if you're not going to be keeping urban youth out of gangs or keeping them away from crime, at least there's a fair chance you can get me a new TV.
posted by Scotty 2-shots at 7:01 PM
The CocBlog
4 Comments:
Look at you being all ubber-liberal. My little Scotty's all grown up. ::snif:: I'm so proud!
What's with the parky fruit? You know what we say about the Park Service dweebs in federal fire don't cha? State parkies are worse cause their just wanna-bes!
Fo shizzle yo! Your use of the term biznitch is well placed.
I half expect you're writing this for a reaction. At least I hope you are.
He killed four people for greed.
Two-shots, have you ever lost someone close to you? Worse, have you had someone close taken from you?
The fact that you think good behavior and activism could give balance to such a thing is naive on your part.
Revenge is about greed, while justice is about balance. And for justice to be served, this man had to die.
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