12.13.2005

Stanley Williams

They killed Stanley Williams in California today. There's a couple of things I think are worth discussing, besides the obvious question of whether or not it's right for the state to kill someone on the recommendation of 12 average folk.

First, although he founded the Crips and was convicted of murder, Stanley had pretty much completely reformed himself in the time he'd been in prison, writing anti-gang books and supporting children in anti-gang programs.

We have to consider the fact that, in some aspects, our prisons are supposed to be reformatory institutions. We put the criminals in, they serve their time, think about their crimes, attend some sessions or whatever it is they are supposed to do, and they come out changed folk.

In theory.

In reality, it seems that almost never happens. But, here we have a guy who was bad, the king of the baddest, the founder and leader of the Crips. And he reformed himself, found religion, and did a complete one-eighty on his previous life. In prison he did this, surrounded, no doubt, by plenty of Crips and/or Bloods and whatever other riff-raff he might now be speaking out against.

In this case, prison was a 'success'. He was reformed, a new man, a benefit to society. And yet, we killed him.

I don't know. I just feel this was the wrong message to send. In an effort to "get tough" you end up sacrificing someone whose life would have much better served society as a positive example. It would have been a far more powerful message to the disenfranchised youth that live in the gang culture today if his sentence had been transmuted to, say, life in prison.

The second thing I think is perfectly bizarre is the Kafka-esque reasoning behind his death. Governor Schwarzenegger said, basically, that the reason he didn't offer clemency is that Williams never apologized for the murders, and in fact, proclaimed his innocence until his death.

Um. It's way too reminiscent of Camus' Stranger that a person could, in effect, be put to death for proclaiming his innocence. Let's imagine that the jury of his peers got it wrong, and he didn't actually do it. And he gets the death sentence. Now, on the eve of his death, we decide, because he keeps insisting he didn't do it, even though we're pretty sure he did, he must die. But, if he was willing to be branded a murderer, something he didn't do, then he survives.

I'm sorry, that's a completely fucked up reason to execute someone.

The other bizarro part is, apparently, there was some sort of secret game going on that Williams lost. That is, if he had discovered the secret password ("I'm sorry."), he'd still be alive today. But he didn't figure it out in time, and so we killed him.

That's fucked up too.

I have my own feelings about the death penalty, but it was Arnold's frightening reasoning that I thought was the scariest part of the whole story. It was heartless justice, that kind of cold rationalization and lesson-teaching that those who would "save" society visit on those that would "destroy" it. I can't get behind that.

posted by risser at 11:20

Nobody has anything to say.