Will the execution of Crips founder be a mistake?

What Snood says is true. Also, there is a great deal of tampering with evidence and false information to convict a targeted person. There is no way the system is fair. And it benefits the victim nothing if the wrong person gets convicted or the sentence does not fit the crime.

You initially said, "Killing someone white is far more likely to land a person on death row than murdering blacks," and claimed that demonstrated an "inequitable and unjust application of the death penalty." I addressed that particular aspect of your position, and attempted to find out how you considered that to be an argument against the use of the death penalty (as opposed to an argument in favor of increasing the use of the death penalty). You responded by simply saying the system is "biased," but as I pointed out, what you are articulating appears to only be a bias against the victim of the crime.



I've been trying to get you to explain your position so that it makes sense, but thus far you haven't. I don't think you are going to ... so please don't feel obligated to "play along" any further.

Ticoyama, don't be shocked, but you are probably the only person on A2K who either genuinely doesn't understand, or still insists on feigning ignorance about, the unequal application of the death penalty and why that is commonly cited as grounds for opposing it as policy. Maybe you just enjoy the mental masturbation of sophistic wordplay. Oh wait - didn't you say you're a lawyer?

Snood, I understand your argument is common, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to support it. I'm just asking you to make a valid argument in support of it. You assert that statistically more death row inmates have killed white victims than black victims -- I'm not arguing against that claim. But I am asking you to explain why you think that "unequal application of the death penalty" is a good argument against the death penalty.

After all, if you were to come here and claim that statistics show robbers who stole $1,000 from a white guy were sentenced to 1 year in jail, while robbers only got 1 month in jail for stealing $1,000 from a black guy (and assuming that were the case), I would agree that is an example of unequal sentencing based upon the race of the victim. But I would not immediately rise to the conclusion that 1 year in jail was inappropriate. Whatever sentence is appropriate should be applied equally in all cases, regardless of the race of the victim. Clearly the question is whether the sentence meted out is appropriate, and you cannot simply claim that just because more capital defendants kill white victims, that means the death penalty is inappropriate.

This is not "sophistic wordplay." This is just me pointing out the illogical argument you have put forward.

Stanley Crouch
Edirtorial

Stop blurring the lines
between maniac & martyr







Tonight in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to have a closed meeting with those trying to get Stanley (Tookie) Williams clemency and those in law enforcement who want Williams to meet his end on Tuesday.Williams, who was sentenced to death after being found guilty of murdering four people in 1979, has the dubious honor of being one of the founders of the vicious street gang, the Crips.

Still, Williams is being held up as an example of redemption because he has supposedly turned his life around. He has written children's books that speak out against gang violence. But the actor and writer Joseph Phillips discovered that the highest selling children's book written by Williams has sold only 330 copies. Not exactly a universal audience. The murderer has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times. But almost anyone can nominate you. That does not prove universal acknowledgment of importance.

What does all of this mean? Little. When we see the NAACP, Jamie Foxx, Danny Glover and that paragon of public morality, Snoop Dogg, calling for Williams to receive clemency, one is sure that they have bought into the big con that has as its foundation the interconnectedness of the death penalty and race. The two elements have become so interwoven that some assume that if a black man is on Death Row it has something to do with bias and an unrepresentative jury pool. One of the men crying for Williams to get clemency cites the fact that he was tried by an all-white jury, none of whom were his peers. Does that mean that Williams should have had a jury of ruthless gang leaders? Williams, like all criminals, is a lawbreaker first and has an ethnic identity second.

The hard fact is that since 1980, street gangs have killed 10,000 people in Los Angeles, which is three times the number of black people lynched throughout the United States between 1877 and 1900, the highest tide of racial murder in the history of the nation.

Our commitment to redemption is fundamental to our civilization. But since the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, we have seen the same games run on the black community by the identical kinds of political hustlers who almost never met a criminal or a murderer who was not the real victim of society and should be forgiven all crimes, which, as in the Williams case, shouldn't even be discussed. Look to the bright side. Give the brother a break.

I wouldn't touch that kind of thinking with a garbage man's glove. Yesterday was the anniversary of Colin Ferguson's rampage on the Long Island Rail Road. Maybe he should come out of his mental fog and start writing children's books. Ferguson might join Williams in a nomination for the Nobel Prize and watch the chumps line up in support of clemency for his bloody acts. Who knows? Hope springs eternal

That one gives me pause, Au.

I've always liked Stanley Crouch.

So have I. His editorials are honest and he lets the chips fall where they may. He never, allows race to color his opinions.

This on a backdrop of one of the most corrupt police departments in the nation. I don't deny that there are many cold blooded killers in those gangs, but we still have to take them on a case by case basis. If Tookie's lawyers really don't have anything, the law will take its course. There is no redemption in the current system.

here's something else to ponder:

in a recent interview on MSNBC, Williams said this:


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10252436/

and here's an excerpt from his website, tookie.com



http://www.tookie.com/tookie_fact_sheet_10.18.05.pdf

obviously, there's a difference between an "all-white" jury and a "virtually all-white" jury. finally, here's a comment from his clemency lawyers:



http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-12_1_05_DS.html

that remark about a juror looking Filipino makes it hard to take seriously anything else his lawyers have to say.

Well... I don't know if its accurate to say race never colors his opinions. I think what Mr Crouch would say is that race colors ALL his opinions - as does it most peoples'. Here's an excert from his review of the movie Crash:


There is bitterness among minorities toward whites whom they assume have power due to the rules of bigotry; and there is bitterness among whites who believe that whatever power or privilege minorities have is the result of bending the rules in their favor, not because of their abilities. We know that there are very few situations in which being white isn't an advantage. Such topics have long been looked into in our more serious television dramas, usually cop shows like "Hill Street Blues," "Homicide" and "NYPD Blue." "Crash" is in that line because pivot points are supplied by the complex nature of crime, violence, and accident.

"Crash" says some things about American life that we need to think about seriously in our ever more muddy vision of what must or must not be done. The problems of race and class are never less than real and they can only be handled if we face the truth that everyone is a participant in this aspect of our national drama.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/309870p-265145c.html

Snood
Not quite the same thing as determining right and wrong based upon race. I make it a point to read his editorials and can remember no instance where he has flashed the race card. In fact if memory serves he has on occasions had negative comments regarding those that do.

Well, I guess everyone can come to their own conclusions (and when don't they?) about Mr Crouch's perspective and voice. I'm okay with that. He just makes me think again about the issue at topic in this thread, is all. And I don't give many contemporary pundits or essayists that kind of respect.

Let me ask this of those posting to this thread...
What do you think will be the larger result of either a "yea" or "nay" from the governator?

I think those with a lust for blood in law enforcement will be gratified, while possibly fewer convicted criminals will see a benefit to rehabilitation. I don't know how it will play among the gangs.

"yea" = abuse of the system and more frivolous appeals to the death penalty.

"nay" = Rioting. You people in L.A. had better find your guns, I'm telling you, this guy is going down because first of all, this is a decision that's too big for Swartzinegers little brain, and second, people in So-Call look for any reason to riot. We can thank the celebrities for blowing this case way out of proportion for this one.

There are no frivolous appeals to the death penalty.

There well may be riots after they carry out the sentence. I hope it can be minimized.

There could be some small-scale rioting, but I would emphasize the "small-scale." I really don't think that anyone sees Tookie Williams as a champion of anything. An example of successful rehabilitation, maybe, but he's not viewed as a victim. Any violent protests would likely come from gang-banger youths who feel alienated. Those who object to the death penalty on general principle in cases such as this aren't likely to start wilding. But I'm sure the LAPD will be standing by with "batons" at the ready. (When did we stop calling 'em "clubs"? Isn't a baton something wielded by an orchestra conductor?)

If, on the other hand, Ahhnold signs the clemency petition, he'll be villified by the "compassionate" conservatives as having caved in to left-wing pressure. The governator can't win in either scenario, so he might as well do the clement thing. I'm not predicting that he will, mind you.

I can't really see Arnold as sparing Tookie.

I think he will do what is popular for his party and not what is popular for his state. That seems to be his trend of governing, so Tookie is a gonner.

For some reason I don't think there will be any rioting. (I've been in the middle of all of them but I don't participate in lawlessness.)

I don't think it's a good time for haste though. We don't need any more trouble in L.A. or anywhere else right now.