Stanley "Tookie" Willliams

(of course, I'm against the death penalty and think everyone on death row should just have their sentences commuted)

...or some bullshit like that.

This Tookster case? I don't know. If the evidence stinks, then no. If it's 100% sure he did kill those people, then what he did after that doesn't matter, the law of the country/state where he killed is the law that should decide what happens. Whether that law is right or wrong doesn't matter (if you don't want to die, then don't smuggle drugs into Thailand or kill anyone in states where the death penalty is used).

But not so much I'd ever vote for him.

But not so much I'd ever vote for him.

OTM and OTM.

Selling drugs = mass murder?

WTF?!?

Neither did StanM.

I don't follow

It's just... what's the alternative? If you kill someone, should you be fed and given shelter for the rest of your life when other people have to work for those things?

Yes, I know, those other people are "free" - but some non-killers are starving or are homeless while murderers are kept alive!?

There is just no simple yes/no, I believe, so every discussion about this can only end in tears. :-)

i flip-flop on the death penalty thing all the time.

definitely the only good thing that old fucker did. even without the licenses-for-bribes scandal and various other ryan administration corruption, i doubt that the death row moratorium woulda helped him get re-elected. definitely a bold move, esp. by a republican.

Of course, there's no way to prove that they will "reflect upon their crimes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless."

http://www.discod.com/arnold/arnoldvsdisco.mov

Williams has written books that instruct readers to avoid the gang lifestyle and to stay out of prison.... Since 1995 he has "tried to preach a message of gang avoidance and peacemaking.... "It is hard to assess the effect of such efforts in concrete terms, but the continued pervasiveness of gang violence leads one to question the efficacy of Williams' message";

In November 2005, the Fontana, California Police Department advised print and television media that a warrant had been issued for registered sex offender Lafayette Jones. Jones, wanted for allegedly molesting an ex-girlfriend's 13-year-old daughter at gunpoint, was identified by the police department as the son of Stanley Tookie Williams. [30] [31] Williams' official Reply Petition for Executive Clemency submitted on November 21, 2005, by Peter Fleming, Jr., stated that this was a lie purported by the police department, including an attached declaration from Lafayette Jones' mother, which declared under penalty of perjury that Lafayette was not Stanley Tookie Williams' son.

Anti-death penalty arguments are not assisted by

1) Racist comments like the one above

2) Bizarre adulation of unrepentant mulitple murderers

3) Comments like: i hope his ghost haunts the shit out of that nazi fucker Not even sure what catagory of uselessness such a comment falls in.

4) Moronic posturing that after decades in the courts, multiple governors, it's the present governor's fault this gangster was euthanized. Why don't all 50 governors pardon everyone on death row like the guy in Illinois? This is really Gray Davis's fault. He did nothing.

5) There's much to be said against the death penalty. It needs to be heard. It needs to be said by people other than Hollywood crackpots and publicity whores like Jesse Jackson. And it applies to everyone on death row, not just to special cases like Williams, a vile, guilty murderer.

Is that the term officially sanctioned by the Nazi Party?

Ok, this one doesn't hold up.

-- andy -- (and...), December 12th, 2005 6:26 PM. (later)

Replace "firing squads" with "lynchings," and "cages" with "tent compounds," and find out what you get.

(If Wisconsin or Massachussetts weren't available...)

why show both of these guys all buffed out? is there a competition?
m.

Is that better?

Dude, the APOSTROPHES

I was replying to the "death penalty = vote-winner" comment and added the race issue because, well, this case already had some of that (all African American jurors being removed from the jury).

So, I thought, if this is a racially influenced discussion and vote-winning is involved, then this "just because the Californian population is mostly..." was not too far fetched a question.

But whatever. Someone anonymous yells racist at me and I go into defensive mode. Man, I'm such a n00b.

"An eye for an eye" was an old testament commandment that actually LIMITED the personal retribution allowed by law to equal whatever the harm was.. prior to "eye for an eye", if somebody cut off your hand, well, you might go over to their house and kill them and the government didn't really bother you about it. It was a humane law for the time.

Jesus mentioned "an eye for an eye" in the sermon on the mount, when he reeled off every touchstone moral law of the old testament and offered his new interpretation (aka "the beatitudes"). Ever the vote-winner, he was careful to say that he came NOT to contradict the old laws, but to breathe new life into them. the fact that this quote even survives in the texts we read now -- whether it was said by jesus himself or added later by his followers -- attests to how potentially inflammatory his teachings were. He said christians had an even greater responsibility than limiting their vengeance to equal the offense done to them. Christians had to go farther -- to limit their vengeance to even LESS than the original offense. He hyberbolized this responsibility to its limit point -- i.e. if someone smacks you, turn your other cheek to them so they may smack that one as well.

to my mind, the seeds of revolution are in this way of thinking -- christians will not use the letter of the law as their guide, but will adhere to their own moral code.

i'm not up on this entirely, but it's said that St. Paul interpreted Jesus' admonition as a purely personal one and held that governments still had the moral authority to punish pretty much how they saw fit. i personally find this kind of thinking totally bankrupt, but i don't doubt St. Paul is what the modern Christians who support the death penalty base their support on. it's hard to see on what else they can base it.

Another thing that really hamstrings moral opposition to the death penalty is deciding that "vile, guilty murderer[s]" aren't worthy of that opposition, a position that makes you ... well, a supporter of the death penalty, surely?

leftist protests are really impressive aren't they.

"Williams was convicted of murdering four innocent bystanders with a sawed-off shotgun in 1979. There was nothing peaceful or compassionate about the way Albert Owens, Thsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yee Chen Lin died. Owens was a white teen-age clerk at a 7-11 convenience store, shot twice in the back of the head -- execution-style -- as he lay unarmed on the floor during a hold-up. A witness testified that Williams mocked the gurgling sounds Owens made as he lay dying. "You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him," the witness quoted Williams.

The Yangs were Taiwanese immigrants who, along with their daughter Yee Chen Lin, were gunned down during a motel robbery two weeks after Owens died. Half of the daughter's face was blown off by the shotgun blasts, former L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Robert Martin told me in an interview this week. Williams called them "Buddhaheads," Martin recounted, and robbed them of petty cash.

(xpost: Yikes.)

At least he doesn't think we're as bad as China.

I think your interpretation is correct. Paul was more concerned about kowtowing to Rome and not getting the Christians persecuted by the government, if he could help it, so he tended to neuter a lot of Jesus more revolutionary statements, especially when they potentially conflicted with Roman policies.

Associated Press

VIENNA, Austria - Political parties in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's hometown have started a petition drive to remove his name from a sports stadium.

The dispute stems from the governor's decision this week to deny clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams. The co-founder of the Crips gang was executed early Tuesday in San Quentin State Prison for four 1979 murders.

Opposition to the death penalty is strong in Austria, and the once-popular Schwarzenegger has lost much of his shine since becoming California governor for refusing to spare convicted murderers on death row.

The outcry was especially sharp this week after the clemency denial for Williams, who had written children's books warning of the dangers of gang life. Politicians from the Greens party in the southern Austrian city of Graz, Schwarzenegger's hometown, reacted by calling for his name to be removed from the "Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium."

On Thursday, the local Social Democrats said they would support that appeal, meaning there likely will be majority backing in the city council for renaming the stadium. The council, which is responsible for the stadium, is expected to take up the matter on Jan. 19.

The Union for Austria's Future wants to keep the stadium's current name, arguing that generating controversy around it could lead to financial loss by prompting sponsors to withhold funds from sporting events there.

A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger said the office would not comment on the matter

anyway, in person protests are great precisely because you have no fucking idea what might go down. which is more interesting, at least.

He loves China too. He has a liking for murdering barbaric regimes.