1. Tookie Williams was guilty as sin. He was tried by jury in a court of law and was presumed innocent until proven guilty at the time. Had he been white, affluent, aligned with “the right people”, etc., he still would have been found guilty. Therefore, he paid for his crimes with his life. If he didn’t want to die, then he shouldn’t have committed murder.

2. The anti-death-penalty crowd doesn’t seem to care about the pain and anguish suffered by the victims of murder and their survivors. To say that the killers of their loved ones should be spared from capital punishment is a slap in the face to them. Unfortunately, many anti-DP types have never suffered the loss of a loved one due to a thug acting as judge, jury, and executioner in a selfish act of self-gratification.

3. I submit to the anti-DP crowd, that if they wish to have their cause taken more seriously, they need to seek out more valid cases where the death penalty may be inappropriate in cases where one’s culpability might be called into question, such as the case of Cory Maye. To date, I have yet to hear about the anti-DP crowd coming to his rescue. I guess being a murdering gang banger carries more weight with them than a law-abiding citizen who acted in self-defense.

Do you want to lobby for a man on death row who’s TRULY innocent? Cory Maye needs your help, GCW. Right now.

As for the Tookie Williams case, any further argument is moot. Dead man, dead topic.

There was a time in our country’s history when a man was innocent until proven guilty. Now it seems that men are assumed guilty based on many things including economic status, social standing, pedigree, aliances, acquaintences, etc.

Understand that I’m not saying Tookie was a saint… nor that he was a “good person”. I believe that he committed crimes and egregious trespasses against he fellow man. With that said; 1) I’m not so certain that he was guilty of the crime for which he was convicted 2) don’t believe that the use of the death penelty is appropriate period.

I’ll reply at length later.

1) I have no “faith in the system”. This is after all a system where racist men in the south could commit crimes at will against anyone of a darker shade and not worry abut being convicted.

2) It is highly unlikely that black men, which don’t even make up 1/3 the population of this nation are purpetuators of 3/4s of the crimes herein. Yet they make up just under 3/4s of the prison population.

3) Jury of peers. It’s a psycological fact that people tend to show empathy toward people “more like themselves”. It would be interesting to know what the make up of the convicting jury was.

4) White men have been acquitted of charges when there was far more compelling evidence against them than black men who were convicted of crimes with little or no evidence.

5) Black and hispanic men tend to receive harsher punishment for the same crimes than do white men.

Given all of this it’s hard for me to say that Tookie was guilty as charged. While there is no doubt that he did some terrible things, it’s completely possible that he’s innocent of that for which he was convicted. Which raises the question of wheter he should die for a crime that he didn’t commit based on the fact that we know he did commit other crimes?

I’m against the death penalty because the system is flawed. Man is far from infallable and to submit the mortality of a person to such fallability is woefully irresponsable at best.

Tookie’s claim of innocence was nothing but a selfish act to help garner sympathy. He was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, and the evidence proves his guilt.

He had the opportunity to atone and apologize, and he chose to blow it. As a result, his arrogant pride died with him in the execution chamber.

End of the “innocence” discussion.

Though I still can’t comment directly (God, I miss my blog on days like this!), I can say that I’m proud of you and all my CB bretheren.

M