By: NotSoMuch

NotSoMuch — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:30:43 +0000

I oppose the state using death as a legal penalty … for anyone … anywhere … any time.
I will not list all the reasons as these arguments are articulated very well elsewhere. But I agree with those arguments and support them.
I am ambivalent about Tookie
He is the poster child for those who do support the death penalty.
If he’s a murderer, he probably doesn’t shy away from lying nor would he blush much while he lied. His own statements about himself are obviously suspect.
Actions talk louder than words but neither his words nor his actions give me much faith that he has reformed. If you are still being bound by the strictures of gang membership and talking about “snitches” then you still buy into all that sub-culture and you are still caught up in all that entails (and that ain’t a Sunday afternoon Ladies’ tea party in a summer garden).
Tookie, heed this: “You are part of the solution or you are part of the problem.”
I suppose if I was at all equivocal about the death penalty, I would gladly see the state exercise Tookie’s sentence.
But I don’t.
Redemption is not extended by “others”. It has to be sought out by the person himself. There is no use in others granting forgiveness when it has not even been sought or has only been sought half-heartedly.
But, in a case like this, just as much as redemption comes from inside “him”, mercy can come from inside me (and millions of other “me’s”)
And I give it gladly.
It may or may not make him better. Who knows?
I know it makes me better.
I don’t think we should show mercy to Tookie any more than anyone else facing the death penalty.
But we should show mercy to all those facing the death penalty.
We don’t show him mercy because he has risen to some level of redemption … because he now deserves it.
We show him mercy because: we deserve it.
We deserve to be better than the person who murdered those 4 people (whether that person was Tookie or someone else). I oppose putting him to death today just as much as I would have opposed it on the very day the 4th of those people was murdered. My mercy has nothing whatsoever with what he did or did not do at the time of the murders. My mercy has nothing whatsoever with what he did or did not achieve in the intervening years … whether the good things he is reported to have done were done … or –if they were done– whether they were done in a genuine way.
His redemption probably does have to do with him actually doing good, him actually doing good in a genuine way.
But that’s him, not me.

Comments on: Please Call to Save Tookie Williams

By: NotSoMuch