Tookie Williams & The Question of Redemption
By Denise Best | Related entries in In The NewsYes, the issue of capital punishment will always incite some degree of controversy.
The coverage and exposure of Tookie William’s case though focused more upon the question of whether redemption should be a consideration in the equation.
Convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams, the Crips gang co-founder whose case stirred a national debate about capital punishment versus the possibility of redemption, was executed early Tuesday.
William’s authorship of children’s books with an anti-gang message was being offered by his supporters as a prime reason for clemency.
In the days leading up to the execution, state and federal courts refused to reopen his case. Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied Williams’ request for clemency, suggesting that his supposed change of heart was not genuine because he had not shown any real remorse for the killings committed by the Crips.
“Is Williams’ redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?” Schwarzenegger wrote. “Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”
Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven in Whittier and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and the couple’s daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned. Williams claimed he was innocent.
Witnesses at the trial said he boasted about the killings, stating “You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him.” Williams then made a growling noise and laughed for five to six minutes, according to the transcript that the governor referenced in his denial of clemency.
So, if the question is about the possibility of redemption, then what would constitute sufficient evidence of such a transformation?
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December 13th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
That strikes me as a curiously American viewpoint on capital punishment. State sanctioned murder is not about the criminal, it is about the state. It is not something that the criminal “deserves” and that s/he should only be saved from if there is some redeeming factor. It is something that the state chooses to inflict on him/her and so the moral question to ask is not about the culpability of the criminal (which in these situations is often close to absolute) but about the morality of the state’s actions. To see why this is so, ask the question “why stop at death”? Why not torture? Why not an inhumane execution? Why not hanging drawing and quartering? Once you inflict intentional, premeidated murder on the criminal there is no sound moral reason for stopping there. You’ve gone into a whole new ballpark from “mere” imprisonment, you’re interfering directly with the bodily processes of the criminal. I wrote more on this recently in the context of an Australian man hanged in Singapore for drug trafficking.
In short, I think your question is flawed because it assumes that the state is justified in inflicting the punishment and that escape from it must be earned by the criminal. That’s the wrong way of looking at it.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:29 am
The key word I notice in the definition above is UNLAWFUL. Since the state has sanctioned capital punishment, it cannot be considered UNLAWFUL, and therefore can’t be murder. It may be immoral in the opinion of some, but it is not murder.
Personally, I would have no problem with some of the other methods you mention being used on some of the people on death row. They deserve for the things they’ve done. But even I could see those would be inhumane, and we should keep ourselves above that level.
Back to Denise’s point….
The problem I see with “redemption” is that someone given the death penalty shouldn’t even be around long enough to earn redemption. This guy sat on death row for 25 years! Had he been executed within a year, the question would have never even come up.
December 14th, 2005 at 2:21 pm
Jeremy,
For the sake of argument, let’s say you could have been “Governor for a Day” when the decision was being made to grant or deny a clemency plea to Tookie Williams.
What would have been your criteria, your litmus test, for the decision?
December 14th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
I think I’d do what that outgoing governor did a while back and grant blanket clemancy or at the very least a moratorium. The problem is that I’d make that clear during the hypothetical campaign leading up to this hypothetical situation and so I’d never get to the point of being able to do this in a state where the death penalty still existed. Like I said, it’s about us, not about the criminal.