The media should be excused for feasting on the clemency campaign for Stanley “Tookie” Williams and his execution at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday morning, even though most efforts to save condemned men pass almost without mention. Typically, we get five seconds of B-roll shot at a vigil that received no advance publicity, and a talking head trying to look somber as she reads the unfamiliar name of some unknown person (almost always a man, and usually a black man) who was executed at 12:01 a.m. that morning. Then, on to the weather!
The Williams case offered irresistible political theater. The condemned, as the world knows by now, was a founder of The Crips, who survived on death row long enough to evolve into a pacifist author of children’s books. The campaign to save him was joined by everyone from hoary civil rights leaders, including the NAACP’s top brass, to a cartoonish gangsta rapper, not known for his pacifist views, like Snoop Dogg.
That would have been enough for a major league media moment, but unfortunately we must also factor in the most cartoonish and theatrical of public figures, a governor whose political pedigree, other than having married a Kennedy, consists of having played action heroes in Hollywood movies. Yes, the only hand that could have stayed this execution belonged to none other than The Terminator.
To top it all off, it happened in Los Angeles, where the inevitable film will eventually be made. Imagine the final scene. Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing himself, looks over at Snoop Dogg, also playing himself, and Morgan Freeman as the civil rights elder. Cutaway to the gangster kingpin turned children’s author (Jamie Foxx), praying in his cell. Then, back to The Terminator, who, just as the clock ticks past midnight, says, “Hasta la vista, baby,” and another man done gone.
It is irresistible political theater, it was a riveting media moment, it will make a dramatic motion picture. And it was a miscarriage of justice. At the end of the day, the state of California and its governor did nothing but join the ranks of killers. Most children know what proponents of capital punishment can’t seem to grasp: that two wrongs don’t make a right. And that if you despise an action – say, taking a human life – then you don’t punish that action by emulating it.
Without subscribing to a conspiracy theory, one might observe that the Tookie Williams case is so polarizing it could have been designed to muddy the capital punishment debate. Many people are so overcome by anger at the thought of street gangs that they might countenance the execution of a man simply because he helped to found The Crips. The murders for which Williams was convicted seem like an entirely believable afterthought, to many.
None of this changes the principles in question. Credible data confirms that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent. We have seen a disturbing number of punishments for capital crimes overturned when submitted to DNA testing. The justice system throughout the U.S. remains stacked against blacks and in particular black men. But, most importantly, capital punishment simply is not just. It is just judicial murder. It is vengeance. And vengeance belongs to God alone, if you trust the Bible – or to any thug with a gun, if you trust the streets. It does not belong to the judicial branch of a civilized government.