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Here in California, we are plunging toward another rendezvous with destiny: Stanley “Tookie” Williams is scheduled to be executed tonight. The newspapers have been filled with bloodthirsty op-eds demanding closure on behalf of the victims’ families, and on the other side of the question we’re seeing stories of redemption: the founder of LA’s Crips gang has remade his life and become a powerful and effective advocate of choosing not to live the gangsta life.
My position on the death penalty is simple: I want the power of the state to be strictly circumscribed, and the right to take a life falls outside what I think should be permitted.
As he so often does, my friend and neighbor Jon Carroll makes my case eloquently in today’s column:

I think subjective judgments about character are not really relevant in death penalty cases. To believe that they are relevant is to believe that uncharismatic, untalented, surly and/or mentally retarded death row prisoners are not worth saving, while a really cool guy is. Are we saying that it’s OK to kill sneaky little weasel-faced people and not OK to kill handsome, intelligent, well-muscled people? It’s fine to construct a hierarchy of character if one is, say, choosing a mate or a president. It certainly may be more convenient for advocates if they choose a guy who can speak well for himself and has done many useful things. But that’s not the point.

The death penalty is wrong because the state (which is to say: us) should not be involved in killing people, particularly in cold blood. To kill people because they killed people — it doesn’t make any actual sense. A society should be slightly more civilized than its sociopaths. Revenge is an understandable emotion. Greed is an understandable emotion too, but stealing is still not legal. The death penalty does not deter and it does not cure.

I do believe people can change and souls can be redeemed here on Earth. But I don’t know enough about Tookie Williams to know if that’s what is happening here.
All I need to know is, the state should not be in the business of killing people. Period.
There is also the plain fact that courts and juries have sent innocent people to the Chair many times, and that matters, tool. Mark Fiore makes this point in his animated op-ed, Pokie the Punisher.
Update: Schwa denies clemency with the blandest of statements.

“After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency.”

Update: Another Schwa quote:

“Is Williams’ redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?” Schwarzenegger wrote less than 12 hours before the execution. “Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”

How does a guy who maintained his innocence from the start plead for clemency from a system that demands a confession?
In the WELL, where I hang out with a lot of smart people in a variety of professions, we have a criminal defense lawyer raging bitterly about the use of “jailhouse snitches” in trials:

I fucking HATE jailhouse snitch convictions. Jailhouse informants should not even be allowed to testify unless the judge informs the jury both before and after the testimony, and again at the end of the trial, that those asshole rats have “a motive to lie,” as some requested defense jury instructions say. They only do that regularly in Canada. But in federal court you can sometimes get a milder instruction — BUT ONLY IF YOU ASK FOR IT. Having read many, many trial transcripts over the past 20 years or so, it seems to me that too many so-called defense lawyers are too ignorant or
too chickenshit to at least ask for such an instruction.

On that basis alone, the death penalty should be eliminated. Too many people with too much to gain from pressing ahead despite doubts, coercion, and exculpatory evidence.
Again, I don’t know the details of the Williams case so I can’t decide whether or not he deserves to die. But I know I don’t want the state deciding that. Put him away for life if that’s what the jury decides, but that should be the limit of what is done in our name.
As my friend Emily said, “the state should not have the power to kill people until/unless we have a perfect justice system.”