Some Guys Are Just Made For Killin'

If you don;t live in California you may not have heard of a man named Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

Williams (I refuse to refer to him as "Tookie" or Mr. Williams) is on California's Death Row at San Quentin prison. He has been there for 24 years. He was found guilty of the murders of four people. One was a clerk at a mini-mart. The other three were a father, mother and adult daughter at a motel. The goal of the murders was robbery. All four people were shotgunned.

Williams is also often "credited" with helping to found the Crips street gang. Actually, he was not one of the founders. He was a guest of the California Youth Authority (read youth prison) during that time. But the claim, made by his supporters seem to think that his being a founder of this band of hyenas seems to give him a street "cred" that he would not otherwise have.

If all goes according to schedule, Williams will be walking the last mile this coming Tuesday and will be breathing his last for killing four people. I celebrate the death of no man, but there are some people without whom the world is a better place. Williams is one of those. He did bad things and, for his own justice as well as ours, he deserves to be executed. To deny him the death penalty would be to deny him his justice. He knew the rules when he pulled the trigger and there's no reason for society to cheat him out of his reward.

But there has been a movement afoot among the local glitterati, race hustlers, bleeding hearts and dimbulbs to demand that the state give clemency to Williams because, in prison, about ten years ago, he made a turn around and was, to quote one supporter, "redempted." What did he do to get "redempted?" He said that his involvement in the Crips was a bad thing and "wrote" books for young people telling them that gangs are bad. The word "wrote" is used in the preceding sentence because it is suspected that the books were actually ghostwritten. This despite the fact that prison officials say that Williams is still a "shot-caller" for the Crips.

What's interesting is that Williams has never apologized for, or even admitted to, the murders for which he is in prison.

As I write the governor of the state of California is pondering the giving clemency to this beast. What I want to know is, why? Williams cannot, no matter how "redempted" cannot bring back the lives of those he murdered. "Writing" kids' books about how bad gangs are just doesn't make it. 99.9% of the people on Williams old turf could tell a kid that gangs are bad.