We fulfilled the biblical directive to render unto Caesar ... Redemption: Let God sort it out.

The world really is going to hell in a handbasket.

If the man - who for some sick and unfathomable reason (eg. a flashy campaign and a bit of stardust) has been granted the power of life and death over his electorate - had been at least a real actor instead of a bodybuilder in brainless action pantomimes, he might have learnt "that same prayer that doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy", rather than erp's notion of rendering corpses unto Caesar.

It is, after all, mightiest in the mightiest.

A crap actor in crap films, and a crap man in a crap, dirty, crappy incident.

I expected to wake up this morning and find the Los Angeles streets in flames because of all the gang members who were going to take to the streets in response to Tookie's execution -- or at least that's what the stories coming out last week claimed would happen if Arnold denied clemency. While I suppose the Angeleno street, like the Arab street, may rise up today, or tomorrow, or someday about something, it seems that gang members who weren't even born when Williams went to jail aren't as eager as claimed to go head-to-head with the LAPD over the death of their former CEO.

One down many more to go.

Brit,

A rapper or gangbanger pretends to have a philosophy and all the lefties take him seriously
and yet the Governor needs to apologize for
making his fortune through bodybuilding and
action movies?

He speaks far better english and is obviously
more capable of cogent thoughts than the
lifelong denizens of the 'hood.

Faster please.

Well at least the leftists will have another T shirt to add to their Che Guevarra collections.

John:

I thought there were no more gangs thanks to him?

Took, Took, Tookie goodbye!

The only injustice here is that his sentence wasn't carried out 25 years ago. And don't get me started on the Nobel nominations and children's books.

Brit:

You shouldn't get all your information about a person from the movies. I wager that the governor has accomplished more from less in his life than any of the posters here, including you.

I couldn't care if Schwarzenegger had the acting talent of Olivier and the judgement of Solomon, nor do I give two hoots whether Tookie's anti-gang children's books worked or didn't.

I'll never be convinced that we haven't reached the very peak of insanity when winning 48% in a local election grants a man the power of life and death in criminal cases.

Brit: That's not what's going on here. Williams was sentenced to death by a jury and that verdict was reviewed ad nauseum for better than 20 years. Schwarzenegger had one last chance to commute his sentence, but that's not the same as having the power of life and death. For better or worse (I think better), California law -- made by its legislators and in conformity with the will of its people -- includes the death penalty. For the Governor to take the position that all prisoners deserve clemency because the death penalty is necessarily wrong (which I take it is your position) would be antidemocratic and would lead in short order to the loss of the power of clemency.

Which is, I suppose, the point. The involvement of the Governor does not cause the execution of any person not sentenced to die with all the process that's due and a little more. It can only save a person who would otherwise be put to death.

Brit:

Do courts count?

If he's able to turn the execution order into life without parole, but chooses not to, in what sense does he not have the power of life and death?

May God have mercy on Stanley Williams's soul. And kudos to Governor Schwarzenegger for allowing justice to be done.

Brit: Yes, to the limited extent you say, then Arnold did have the sole power of life or death. But so what. The people of California have decided through their elected representatives to have the death penalty. Williams was judged by a jury under law. He was clearly guilty. He had numerous judges review his claims.

We in America have decided to have the death penalty in most states. It is our decision, not yours.

Did Arnold randomly pick Tookie off the street and kill him?

Mumia next.

Does Brit believe that the Nazis should have been executed after the Nurembrg Trials? The only difference between Tookie and them is they had more and bigger gangs. Other than that it was kill to get more for yourself and your group. The life of the others does not matter. Neither did anything to tear down the group. Tookie preached a good line but did nothing about it. He could have worked with the police to break down the gangs but he chose not to. The governator made the right decision IMNSHO.

A little off topic, but since you mentioned the Nobel Peace Prize, let me suggest that you join me in calling it the "Nobel Peace Reprimand", since in the last ten years it has almost always gone to someone who has made the world more dangerous. And we should urge the Norwegian committee to be consistent and to impose fines rather than give awards.

(The literature prize should also be a reprimand, for similar reasons.)

Funny you should mention the Nazis, dick - the Final Word in any argument should always be a comparison with the Nazis, as all teenage debators know.

So here's mine. The Nazis: another set of democratically-elected state killers.

keep in mind that brit comes from a non-democratic country where they put people in jail for defending themselves against violence, and only allow people to say what the government wants them to say. of course he is against the death penalty because he has been told to be against it. we impeached the state supreme court justice for not upholding the will of the people on this matter (death penalty).

Brit:

murderers, not killers.

eu going down (aka various other things on here, I suspect):

Thank you for the brilliant psychological analysis, but my objection to capital punishment is quite specific.

I tend towards pro-life positions, and I don't believe that any criminal justice system is sufficiently competent to decide who should and shouldn't be prematurely killed. My standard of competence is, of course, perfection.

That applies doubly to action men elected by 48% to the role of God.

Brit:

Weren't the Nazis elected with less? And, as I remember, their percentage went down in the final election they permitted.

Brit: if the criminal justice system isn't competent to decide who should be prematurely killed, then how is it competent to decide who should be locked in a cage until they die of old age? Or even locked in a cage for seven years (the average time actually served for murder in the States.) I confess I've never understood the distinction made for the death penalty, unless it's simply a camel's nose under the tent for those who don't think any kind of punishment is justified. That applies doubly to thugs who've been adopted by the Left, such as the late Mr. Williams and the still-breathing Wesley Cook (you may know him as Mumia Abu Jamal.) What makes you so sure Tookie would have served out a life sentence if he had been commuted?

I agree with (gasp!) the USCCB on this particular issue, and my catechism. There are times and places where execution is morally justified: as a final threat to keep lifers in line; on the battlefield, or in other socially chaotic circumstances. As carried out by the meat grinder of our justice system, I just don't see how anyone can defend it.

It isn't cheaper; it doesn't deter, and because it happens years, sometimes decades, after the fact, even the revenge aspect of it (the least persuasive argument on the pro-execution side) is watered down to nothing.

Not that I lose sleep over someone like this meeting his maker, but can't say that execution is justified either practically or morally. Remember what Gandalf said to Frodo about wishing Gollum dead.

Joe:

I think you have to make a real effort to fail to see the difference between being wrongly killed and posthumously pardoned, and being wrongly imprisoned and freed.

I don't need to make any kind of hypothetical case. I can point to real, living, breathing examples of people wrongfully convicted of IRA terrorist actions who would, had our country retained the death penalty, now be dead.

Again, how is the meat grinder of our justice system any more morally qualified to had out life sentences (really just a variety of death sentence, if actually served) than death sentences?

Arnold's statement is freely available on-line, so there's no need to read it through the filter of the LA Times: http://www.governor.ca.gov/govsite/pdf/press_release_2005/Williams_Clemency_Statement.pdf

I'm no big fan of The Governator, but he's spot on that it's absurd to think that redemption can exist without an acknowledgement of one's wrongs.

Joe:

As Brit wrote, wrongful executions are not hypothetical, not even in the USA. And while you can't give the time served back to someone wrongfully sentenced to life, at least they can be freed.

This question is separate from what I think of the Governator's actions: I don't think he should have commuted the sentence, even if thought the death penalty was immoral. You shouldn't get special treatment because you got the attention of a few celebrities, and The Law and The People have spoken.

Brit,

Your vehemence against the death penalty is evident. But why paint Schwartzenegger so negatively?

48% has nothing to do with anything. Nor does the quality of his movies. We Americans differ with the rest of the world on the death penalty, and the Governor lives in our world, not yours.

Your latest post, re: the IRA is far more persuasive. I'm one pro-death penalty proponent that would gladly bargain it away in a political compromise.

We conservatives give in on the DP in exchange for some form of guarantee that we can forever seperate certain people from ever rejoining society.

From where I sit, Tookie was playing the American system perfectly. He knew that if he wanted life in prison, all he had to do was admit guilt. Instead, he played chicken with the system and (thankfully) lost.

If he got a commuted sentence with out ever having admitting guilt, his next move would have been to ceaselessly petition for a new trial or full pardon. His old gang buddies may have helped by getting some recanted testimony of sorts.

He knew he was only one squishy liberal governor away from full freedom, so he swung for the fence. He struck out.

Your horror at our death penalty is understood. We feel similarly about some of the stories we hear about from the UK re: denying people the right to self defense and the like.

An innocent person killed by a person who should have been in jail is a far more agregious affront to a society than putting to death a convicted killer. (and if an occasional innocent gets by, God will sort it out)

At least that is how we blood thirsty yanks see things. But again, if I could trade the DP for a guarantee that none of these folks would ever get off the prison colony, I'd take that trade.

Your thoughts?

the percentage of people in eu countries that want the death penalty is similar to the percentage here. and it's the same people in both places that don't want it. difference is we live in a democracy where the voters' wishes are acted upon (within the confines of the Constitution) and the europeans are slaves of a socialist state. brit quite clearly is not in favor of democracy or arnold movies.

Ahh, the "meat grinder" argument that Leftists like to trot out. Who made it a "meat grinder" that takes a quarter century to execute scum like Stanley Williams? Why, the Leftists, so they can use it as an argument in support of their position. And their solution is to never to speed things up, or even offer to stop obstructing, but always to spare their fellow thugs.

"Life without parole" is the cowards way out. It's prefered by people who don't have the guts to want tokill the guilty outright, but would rather let time do their dirty work for them. And already there's been talk about how cruel (and expensive) it is to keep 70 year old lifers locked away. (The same goes for "capital punishment is expensive". Guess who made it that way? It always comes down to money for some people...)

As for the "wrongful execution", you've got to be a pretty bad person to end up that way. I figure that even if you aren't personally responsible for the crime for which you are charged, you certainly did similar crimes equally as bad as the one for which you've been condemned, so no great loss. If anything, all the piling up of a tower of hypotheticals shows where their real concerns lie Just another example of Leftist' thug-love at the expense of the law abiding.

Bruno:

The object of my derision is not Arnie, but the system that put him in the position of Final Arbiter. Having said that, I would have been deeply impressed if he had spared Tookie - it would have been an extraordinary act of bravery.

Your comments are appreciated, but those trade-offs are not a practical reality, and being anti-death penalty and being tough on the self-defence issue are not mutually exclusive.

Nor is it the case that most of my countrymen are 'horrified' by your death penalty. In casual surveys, a majority of the British public are in favour of its restoration.

However, I'm convinced that the reason for that is that the surveys are exactly that: causual. If there were a national debate, I'd lay a pretty hefty wager on the anti-camp swinging it. The footage of Gerry Conlon's release would do it at a stroke.

The death penalty is an issue where conservatives understandably wish to distance themselves from bleeding heart, anti-war, leftie types with whom they disagree on 99% of issues. So there is a kneejerk tough guy pro reaction.

But it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny, which is why the rest of the Anglosphere and civilised world, including conservative governments, abolished it.

The justice system is fallible. That's all you need to conclude that the death penalty is insupportable on perfectly good conservative grounds.

It makes no sense, for example, to argue that doctors should not be allowed the power of life and death in euthanasia cases, that mothers should not be allowed it in abortion cases, but that police, judges and juries should take the role of God in criminal cases.

Brit:

Who did Terri Schiavo murder?

Brit:

What gives you the right to imprison a man for life who's rightly convicted?

Just so. The justice system is fallible; that's all you need to conclude that the [ fill in the blank here ] penalty is insupportable on perfectly good conservative grounds. You have to make a real effort to believe that the sort of people who agitate for Wesley Cook's release are going to stop once capital punishment is abolished.

OJ:

"Who did Terri Schiavo murder?"

Since my argument is not about whether the crime merits the punishment of death, but whether the justice system is as infallible as God, that is irrelevant.

"What gives you a right to imprison a man who is rightly convicted?"

Punishment is necessary for the protection of the public, for the deterrent element and for justice. Imprisonment is sufficient in most cases. Some people may well deserve to die. The problem is that we always think we've convicted people correctly, but it sometimes turns out that we were wrong.

Once should be enough to justify removing the risk forever, but it has happened many times, and will happen many times more as long as you have the death penalty.

Joe:

No, there's no evidence for that slippery slope argument. Capital punishment is unique because there is no reversing it, and no compensation for the wrongful victim. You agree that it is a unique punishment, which is why you support it.

Brit: there's never any evidence for the slippery slope argument, is there? Then we find ourselves at the bottom of it. And yes, capital punishment is unique, in that it is the most severe punishment we impose. Something has to be, right? Of course, once it's abolished the current runner-up (life without parole) will be unique in its turn, and then the wheels will begin to grind all over again. Funny how that works.

It is a unique punishment because it is about ending a human life. I would be opposed to it even if there were a slippery slope, which there isn't.

Anybody got a name for a "wrongful victim" in the US who was put to death after the full legal process and then later found to be innocent?

Brit:

Life imprisonment is about the state ending a life as well.

Brit:

Your specific argument was that:

It makes no sense, for example, to argue that doctors should not be allowed the power of life and death in euthanasia cases, that mothers should not be allowed it in abortion cases, but that police, judges and juries should take the role of God in criminal cases.

You're comparing allowing individuals to murder the innocent to society killing the guilty.

Brit and ted walter: Name ONE innocent person executed in the US in the last 50 years. Or 100 years for that matter.

Killing scum like Williams after due process is morally right. It is the only way to give justice to the innocent victim. The only way.

We in the US do not use the death penalty too much but rather far too little.

Brit:

Many more people have been imprisoned for life, raped, brutalized and died there who were convicted unjustly, no? Or do you think death penalty cases have some magical component where they more often snag the innocent? Why is treating a man like an animal for forty or fifty years better than executing him with the dignity his guilt warrants?

here's an argument for all the "caring" people that think the death penalty is cruel: how many innocent lives are spared because the threat of the death penalty inhibits an attacker from taking things just that much further ?

obviously some people will not be dissuaded regardless of the consequences, but equally obvious is that some people are dissuaded. now is the number of lives saved by the death penalty greater than the number of innocent people executed accidentally ?

It's foolish not to admit that the death penalty can potentially, because of human fallibility, result in the death an innocent person.

Lots of Government policies result in the deaths of innocent people, though, don't they? Certainly, failure to capture criminals can result in the deaths of innocents. A law that permits self-defense results in some innocent deaths. A law that barred self-defense would probably result in many more. But even everday sorts of policy decisions do. Is there a moral difference between setting up a system of criminal justice in which there is some potential for error resulting in death and, for example, a health policy? Or a foreign policy? If so, I am not sure that I understand why.

The advantage of the death penaly is that it is, for the most part, very just. Have Europeans stopped writing stories and making movies in which the villain gets it in the end? Why should a criminal justice system be completly divorced from what ordinary folk understand in their hearts constitutes actual justice?

I agree with Brit in regards to the method whereby, Schwarzenegger felt he needed to justify "a decision". It would appear to me that a governor's duty is simply to see that the law is abided by and act to stop its execution only if an injustice is occurring. In other words a mere backup or emergency escape valve as it were.

In this case Schwarzenegger is giving the impression that he was balancing evidence as to the redemption of Williams, which should be of no import under the law. Did he admit guilt? Not relevant. Did he say one of his heros was George Jackson? Not relevant. By engaging in this quasi PR campaign Schwarzenegger is actually doing damage to the law and underming the death penalty, which as others have said is a just punishment. He should have merely said he saw no valid reason to grant clemency and nothing more. In the future will expressions of redemption be grounds for a governor to grant clemency. Would Williams be alive if he had just said the "magic words", I hope not.

How many of the Bianca Jaggers and Mike Farrells wept for Rickey Ray Rector in 1992?

Criminals must removed from our midst for our protection. Punishment and rehabilitation are of secondary importance. As long as dangerous people aren't ever released, it doesn't matter if there's capital punishment, but we can't be sure. There are moonbats who would empty all the prisons if they only could get their hands on the keys.

Many more people paid with their lives and the lives of their children because brutal murderers were set free to kill again, than innocent people who were executed in error.

Kevin:

Not an innocent person. Consdider the possibility that Tookie isn't guilty of murder in this instance--he was still the kind of guy society wants killed. He was guilty.

To the various people who responded to my posts:

1) It's Ted WElter not WAlter.

2) I'm not a "leftist."

3) There have been over 100 exonerations of death row inmates based on DNA evidence in recent years. Given that racism and forensic ineptitude were worse in the past, it's hard to believe that we didn't get it wrong quite a bit (especially in the days when hundreds were being executed every year nationwide). We'll just never know.

4) Regardless who created the "meatgrinder" system, it ain't going away anytime soon.

Ted, nobody is suggesting that people accused of crimes shouldn't get a proper defense including what we all know now as CSI forensics.

Lefties want to go back in time and judge what happened way-back-when by today's standards. I haven't done a study and I don't know if one exists, but I will stand by my contention, that killers who were released from prison are responsible for many more deaths than those wrongfully executed.

Here's a moral dilemma, a killer isn't guilty of the crime for which he's being executed, but has brutally killed other children. How would you vote Ted? Would you agitate to have the killer released because he's innocent of the charge and would you feel remorse if the first thing he does upon being released is kill another child?

Albert Owens, 26.
http://crime.about.com/od/deathrow/a/tookie2.htm

Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Yang, 63 & Yee-Chen Lin, 43.
http://crime.about.com/od/deathrow/a/tookie3.htm

They were innocent when they were put to death.

ted welter:

There have been over 100 exonerations of death row inmates based on DNA evidence in recent years.

Not quite.

This Brookings study is of interest. (Pdf file warning)

Discussion of the article here

Maybe the death penalty does act as a deterent?

BTW: whatever one thinks about the death penalty, what are the odds that the founder of the Cripps is not guilty of murder?

Why should a society tolerate a gang founder?

Burn 'em. Most of them are guilty of one capital crime or another.

erp:

Regarding the “the killer [who has] brutally killed other children”), I guess I need more information—how do I *know he has killed other children? I’m not so naïve as to believe the criminal justice system always arrives at the truth—either when finding guilt or innocence, but it is all we have, at least if we want to remain civilized. If I knew unequivocally that the perp was guilty, and I also knew he was going to skate on a technicality and probably kill again, I might do a Dirty Harry on him myself. But building the ritual machinery of death into our criminal justice system is a different moral dilemma. The resumption of executions hasn’t really accomplished much on the macro level. Rates of murder and mayhem are much more correlated with how many fatherless, feral boys we have running around than with how many of them we execute down the line, don’t you think?

Matt Murphy:

Ok, NRO and the prodeathpenalty.com site they reference definitely poke some holes in the anti-death penalty propaganda, but I think they only bring the “innocence” issue to a draw. In any case, it is not the only argument against wide-scale execution. And I can't help but note that while a .04% defect rate is excellent when manufacturing consumer goods, it is not so great when you (or your dad, or your brother) was executed wrongly. Especially when other alternatives exist which are at least as practical and effective as execution.

The pro-execution side makes a fair point when they criticize liberals for creating the procedural nightmare that our criminal justice system can sometimes become. Guilty parties making endless appeals, catch-and-release justice—I agree they need to be fixed, but these problems are separate from the moral and practical question of executing murderers, which is mostly a red herring. It's like the gun control issue, where I think both sides get a little unhinged.

Jim in Chicago:

Sociologists try to use statistical magic to account for the fact that the phenomena they study are rife with uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and even unknowable variables. So even though my lovely wife does this stuff for a living, I don’t buy much of it. The murder rate went down while executions were going up. Over the same period of time, the crime-prone demographic was shrinking, states were passing three-strikes-you’re out and concealed carry “shall issue” reforms, “broken windows” policing was spreading to urban precincts nationwide, and skirt hems were going up and down.

erp:

Regarding the “the killer [who has] brutally killed other children”), I guess I need more information—how do I *know he has killed other children? I’m not so naïve as to believe the criminal justice system always arrives at the truth—either when finding guilt or innocence, but it is all we have, at least if we want to remain civilized. If I knew unequivocally that the perp was guilty, and I also knew he was going to skate on a technicality and probably kill again, I might do a Dirty Harry on him myself. But building the ritual machinery of death into our criminal justice system is a different moral dilemma. The resumption of executions hasn’t really accomplished much on the macro level. Rates of murder and mayhem are much more correlated with how many fatherless, feral boys we have running around than with how many of them we execute down the line, don’t you think?

Matt Murphy:

Ok, NRO and the prodeathpenalty.com site they reference definitely poke some holes in the anti-death penalty propaganda, but I think they only bring the “innocence” issue to a draw. In any case, it is not the only argument against wide-scale execution. And I can't help but note that while a .04% defect rate is excellent when manufacturing consumer goods, it is not so great when you (or your dad, or your brother) was executed wrongly. Especially when other alternatives exist which are at least as practical and effective as execution.

The pro-execution side makes a fair point when they criticize liberals for creating the procedural nightmare that our criminal justice system can sometimes become. Guilty parties making endless appeals, catch-and-release justice—I agree they need to be fixed, but these problems are separate from the moral and practical question of executing murderers, which is mostly a red herring. It's like the gun control issue, where I think both sides get a little unhinged.

Jim in Chicago:

Sociologists try to use statistical magic to account for the fact that the phenomena they study are rife with uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and even unknowable variables. So even though my lovely wife does this stuff for a living, I don’t buy much of it. The murder rate went down while executions were going up. Over the same period of time, the crime-prone demographic was shrinking, states were passing three-strikes-you’re out and concealed carry “shall issue” reforms, “broken windows” policing was spreading to urban precincts nationwide, and skirt hems were going up and down.

Civilised societies don't execute people because it's 'likely that they did something', and there's 'no smoke without fire', which is what half the arguments on here amount to.

None of you have answered the central problem for the conservative:

If human life is the most valuable property on earth (hence your pro-life positions on abortion and euthanasia), and if we know that the justice system is not infallible, why are you happy to take risks with human lives when there is the viable alternative of life imprisonment?

Brit:

Of course they do, though they generally dress it up a bit. No society tolerates those who are anti-social.

(Unless they can afford a good lawyer)

Your answer would be Stalin's answer, too. You and I obviously have fundamentally different ideas of what constitutes a conservative.

As others have noted, oj is not really very conservative. He's very Republican, which isn't quite the same thing.

Ted: What he is, is very OJ.

We're now in the unlikely situation whereby I'm making a conservative case against the death penalty, and he's making a socialist case for it.

OJ:

Of course Tookie wasn't innocent. Of the either the crimes of which he was convicted or numerous others. His execution was fundamentally just.

Death penalty arguments, though, often turn on the possibility of error.

Brit:

The socialists are next.