Stanley "Tookie" Williams

'I Watched a Man Die Today'

By Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times

SAN QUENTIN -- It's just past midnight, and another Crip is on his way to the graveyard.

Stanley Tookie Williams, who shotgunned four people to death a quarter of a century ago and couldn't sell the story of his redemption to anyone who mattered, took a lethal shot in the arm and closed his eyes for good.

I watched him die from 12 feet away. The execution team struggled to tap a vein, and Williams raised his head as if to question their competence. He also looked at supporters and exchanged final words with them before the drugs kicked in and he was gone.

Nothing I saw made me feel any differently about Williams, the Crip co-founder whose legacy is terrorized neighborhoods and a chorus of weeping mothers.

His anti-violence books and speeches were too little, too late, and the mythologizing of him was as unconvincing as the Nobel nominations.

But his execution was a macabre spectacle in a nation that preaches godly virtue to the world while resisting a global march away from the Medieval practice of capital punishment.

I would have had no problem leaving Williams locked up with his regrets and haunted by his deeds for the rest of his natural life.

I watched a man die today, killed by the state of California with institutional resolve, and wondered what we gained.

If there is a heaven and hell...he will be in hell.

Who wouldn't?

Heaven would probably be giving seats away just for the publicity.

-AC

Snoop Dogg made a video as a tribute to Tookie

Originally posted by Inspectah Deck
Snoop Dogg made a video as a tribute to Tookie

Snoop Dogg, another pillar of society.

That was a good post PVS.

I am amazed right now how tookie has become a media darling. I just saw a teenage kid this afternoon in a canadian suburb wearing a "save tookie" t-shirt.

This world is so messed I wonder if it is beyond retrieval.

interesting post PVS. my comments are not directed at you, but rather are generated by the article:

<<I would have had no problem leaving Williams locked up with his regrets and haunted by his deeds for the rest of his natural life.>>

and if he HAD no regrets? felt no remorse whatsoever? what then? is it fair to continue to have the public pay to keep him locked up for another 30 years?

<<I watched a man die today, killed by the state of California with institutional resolve, and wondered what we gained.>>

what makes him think it's about GAINING anything? speaking of gaining, what did the families of the people whom he murdered gain over these last bunch of years while tookie was able to go about living his life and actually becoming a HERO to many?

<<This world is so messed I wonder if it is beyond retrieval.>>

it does make you wonder sometimes . . .

Originally posted by KharmaDog
Snoop Dogg, another pillar of society.

That was a good post PVS.

I am amazed right now how tookie has become a media darling. I just saw a teenage kid this afternoon in a canadian suburb wearing a "save tookie" t-shirt.

This world is so messed I wonder if it is beyond retrieval.

Like those "Free Yayo" shirts 😂

Seeing as dear ol' Dagon was unable to even attempt to answer any of the questions that I raised, here they are again for your consideration:

Originally posted by Ya Krunk'd Floo
What does it say about a society when a person can reform, show evidence of that reform, show contrition for his deeds (in regards to his life as a crip), yet ultimately be dealt exactly the same punishment as the one he committed? How can a human being be judged in absolutes that refuse to recognise the rehabilitation of man, regardless of what he has done? He was convicted of the crimes he was tried for, so I'm not debating that, but this behavior by the US government is despicable, barbaric and hyprocritical in light of the preaching that comes from the fundamental Right.

There's been talk here about the message it would give if he was pardoned...well, what about the message that screams "You shouldn't kill people, so to show you this is a bad thing to do, we'll kill you!".

Originally posted by leonidas
what makes him think it's about GAINING anything? speaking of gaining, what did the families of the people whom he murdered gain over these last bunch of years while tookie was able to go about living his life and actually becoming a HERO to many?

Interesting point. Wonder how his victim's family's feel about the hero worship thing happening now?

Originally posted by Ya Krunk'd Floo
Seeing as dear ol' Dagon was unable to even attempt to answer any of the questions that I raised, here they are again for your consideration:

The problem with that, although I agree mostly, is that people will always follow the thought pattern:

Murderer = Deserves to be "put to death" (aka murdered).

Most people won't hear anything else.

-AC

Originally posted by Alpha Centauri
The problem with that, although I agree mostly, is that people will always follow the thought pattern:

Murderer = Deserves to be "put to death" (aka murdered).

Most people won't hear anything else.

-AC

thats how i feel.
there are idiots who make him a hero.
i just take serious issue with murdering the murderer.
the death penalty has never worked in deterring crime,
nor will it ever work. forget about the message sent to
gangs by not killing this guy. think about the message we
send to the world by still enforcing murder.

Personally it makes me feel a little bit sick to think that- regardless of crime- the subject of this thread was alive at its incipience, and has since been legally put to death by the government.

Originally posted by Alpha Centauri
The problem with that, although I agree mostly, is that people will always follow the thought pattern:

Murderer = Deserves to be "put to death" (aka murdered).

Most people won't hear anything else.

That's the 'nonsense' that I'm talking about...How can you condem a crime while committing the same crime as a form of punishment? It's so Orwellian that sometimes I wonder whether we are stuck in a 'Groundhog Day'-esque version of the fictional 1984...

I'd love to actually read a sane response to this paradox by someone who believes in capital punishment...

If life is highly regarded, capital punishment is anathema. If life is regarded as of little importance, then capital punishment is unnecessary.

I can only see a way out of that in a general nihilism.

I been reading this quotes:

When Sims asked Williams why he shot Owens, Williams said he "didn't want to leave any witnesses."

Williams also said he killed Owens "because he was white and he was killing all white people."

Later that same day, Williams bragged to his brother Wayne about killing Owens. Williams said, "you should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him." Williams then made gurgling or growling noises and laughed hysterically about Owens' death.

Since movies were mention earlier. I might as well mention Natural Born Killers taught me that we should never make celebreties out of murders.

On the subject of death penalty. You opinion is your own people. And no matter how much you're agaisn't it or supportive....Tookie is gone.

i hear a great deal of anti-capital punishment sentiment expressed. i'm curious -- what do you all propose we do instead? keep them confined in overpopulated, tax-payer funded institutions? release them? 'rehabilitate' them? how? a LARGE percentage of people in prisons are repeat offenders -- prisons are unsuccessful in the vast majority of cases at rehabilitating individuals.

in the grand scheme of morality, is it that much less immoral to with-hold someone's freedom for their entire life (while having good people PAY for that removal of freedoms) than it is to put them to death? are we not simply turning them into zoo animals and locking them up in conditions that only propagate negative behavior?

Originally posted by Alpha Centauri
The problem with that, although I agree mostly, is that people will always follow the thought pattern:

Murderer = Deserves to be "put to death" (aka murdered).

Most people won't hear anything else.

-AC

To my understanding, it supposedly works like this: justice = equity under the law. If you kill, the only 'equal' punishment is to be killed. A sort of "eye for an eye" mentality.

Originally posted by WindDancer
When Sims asked Williams why he shot Owens, Williams said he [b] "didn't want to leave any witnesses."

Williams also said he killed Owens "because he was white and he was killing all white people."

Later that same day, Williams bragged to his brother Wayne about killing Owens. Williams said, "you should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him." Williams then made gurgling or growling noises and laughed hysterically about Owens' death.
[/B]

Those are definitley quotes made by a Nobel worthy candidate. WTF?

Originally posted by KharmaDog
Those are definitley quotes made by a Nobel worthy candidate. WTF?

Sources:

http://crime.about.com/od/deathrow/a/tookie2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Williams

Originally posted by Wanderer259
To my understanding, it supposedly works like this: justice = equity under the law. If you kill, the only 'equal' punishment is to be killed. A sort of "eye for an eye" mentality.

True