I have been, reluctantly, opposed of late to the death penalty, not because of any sense of moral outrage but because of repeated examples of excessive human fallibility (to put it charitably) present in too many capital cases.
That said, I shed no tears over the execution of Tookie Williams, which was the focus of news in the airport and here in California. Except among the most hardcore supporters, there seemed little serious concern that he was actually innocent of brutally murdering four people during two different robberies in 1979, or that the trial had the egregious faults that have stained so many death sentences.
Instead, it focused on the whether Williams had “reformed” or been “redeemed.” Had Williams “turned his life around” by becoming a peace activist, an anti-gang spokesman, a writer of children’s books?
Um … so what if he had?
I don’t recall anything in the law books that says, “It’s okay to murder, as long as you become a children’s author afterward,” or “Murder can be redeemed if you thereafter dedicate your life to peace.” Redemption is a subject better treated in religion and metaphysics, and if there is some moral calculus, some weighing game as to what sort of person Williams was and had been and had become, it would be as much “playing God” (as anti-death penalty activist Mike Farrell put it) for the penal system, the governor, or the Supreme Court, to do so as for, after a determination of facts by a jury (and subsequent appeals courts), the legal penalty to be exacted.
If Williams has turned into such a nice guy, should he have been set free? Or should he still only be punished somewhat, and let off of some punishment, because he writes children’s books?
What does the death penalty, in this case, accomplish? Aside from ensuring that Williams will never repeat crimes of violence against anyone, it accomplishments the fulfilment of the law, despite the efforts of Hollywood stars and activists to argue for an attractive exemption. Jamie Foxx carries no more credibility to pass moral judgment in the matter than the stepmother of one of the victims (nor less). The crimes occurred, the case appears to have been properly proceeded, and — 26 years after those crimes — the punishment exacted.
Case closed.