RIP, Tookie. Stop the Death Penalty.

On December 13, 2005, Stan Tookie Williams was executed by lethal injection for four murders. The onetime leader of the Crips street gang had also turned his life around by becoming an anti-gang crusader, to the point where he had been nominated six times for the Nobel Peace Prize. There is also new evidence that Williams may have been innocent, and that evidence used against him at his trial may have been manufactured. Yet Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied him clemency, because his apology was not good enough; it struck him as "hollow".

Additional resources on "Tookie's" case and his legacy may be found at www.savetookie.org and tookie.com.

I wish to start this blog by inviting opponents of the death penalty, and friends and supporters of Stan Tookie Williams, to tell the governor of California what they think. Please keep it polite, as hard as that may be, I will be moderating in that regard. Here is my letter to Governor Schwarzenegger:

Governor,

I'll never be able to watch your movies again. The man did everything he could to apologize for his legacy as a Crips leader in writing those books for urban youngsters who might be tempted by the gang life. It really looks to me like he might not have committed those murders, that false evidence was used against him. If this is so, we cannot have expected him to apologize for the murders themselves, to admit them. The death penalty is wrong to begin with; anyone who claims to have the power to decide who dies thinks much too much of themselves. This goes for judges and governors as well as "murderers". But to kill a man who might be innocent of the crimes, and who has in any case brilliantly proven that he has become a good man and done so much good, and could still have done so much good... The Terminator indeed. I will be publishing this on RavingModerate.com and stopdp.blogspot.com. Sincerely, Thomas Marshalek, The Raving Moderate

I apologize for being a Johnny Come Lately to this cause, after it is too late for Tookie Williams, whom I only first heard of maybe a couple of weeks ago. But I am moved by his story. Rest in peace, Tookie.