That's not relevant. Killing the murderer doesn't equal your loss either. No punishment can affect the past. The issue is the future. Does the convict serve society better dead or alive? Dead, there's a possible deterrent value. Alive, there are the good works themselves as well as the example they provide to other inmates.

A situation in which more inmates reformed their lives would only be bad for people who want to kill them without moral ambiguity.

Happy Monkey--you are wrong. My loss is relevant. That's the whole point of the punishment. I don't believe we should put people to death for crimes. I believe in letting them live and suffer. I believe heartily in that. There are so many things worse than death.

That's why it's an exceptional event when it happens anyway.And, as I said, I wasn't talking about letting him out. No, what I was calling vengeance was a brother of a victim calling for his death "on the basis that his brother had been sentenced to die by Tookie with no possibility of parole". And I'm not saying that the case was handled poorly, or incorrectly. I'm just saying that there was a good case for a governor's commutation of the sentence. That's vengeance.

No it isn't. Would you support releasing a serial killer if the remaining family member forgave him utterly? If not, then you can't support basing the harshness of the sentence on how much satisfaction victims would get out of it.

You think you've got all the answers. It's easy to sit there playing devil's advocate and putting words in people's mouths. I didn't say anything about how much satisfaction the victims would get out of a punishment. Seems moot, anyway. The victims are dead, aren't they?

OK, family members of the victims. I'd consider them victims as well.

The victims aren't talking.........anymore. :(

yeah. A few children's books on the Golden Rule seem to make up for all this. And, besides, he was an inspiration to others. And, too, if you're a Good Christian, you can see the Jesus in anybody; right, HM?

If the death sentence exists, and the sentence was given, the sentence should be applied in a punctual manner. If Tookie hadn't been give 25 years to get bored enough to write books, if he hadn't had all those years to decide that his lot pretty much sucked and perhaps he should do something to try and save his sorry murdering punk ass while he ticked away the days, there probably wouldn't have been any question or controversy.

Nice pics, Bruce. Tookie won't be doing anyone else that way.

Killing him didn't make up for it either. I'm not a Christian, in that I don't think Jesus was supernatural, but I do think he had some very good ideas on the subject of social justice.Exactly. If you kill 'em fast, you don't run the risk of them muddying up the righteousness of the execution. We can't have that.

He got what he deserved. What really sickens me is how a lot of people are trying to make this a race issue. It has absolutely nothing to do with race. He'd have died the same way regardless of his race. The only real race issue in this case is that with the people praying for his clemency. You can bet your ass if he was a white guy, Jesse Jackson, and the other people praying outside never would have showed up and never would have shed a tear.

He got the death penalty because he brutally and viciously murdered 4 people and he had no remorse for his actions. How can you feel remorse for something you won't even admit to?

Stanley "Tookie" Williams legacy is not one of preventing gang violence. It's one of practicing it. It's one of starting a gang that still murders people today. It's one of destroying the lives of his victims. People seem to forget about his victims so here's a little reminder...

Albert Owens

http://www.homestead.com/prosites-pr...ctim1adweb.jpg


Tsai-Shai Yang

http://www.homestead.com/prosites-pr...ctim2adweb.jpg

Ye-Chen Lin

http://www.homestead.com/prosites-pr...ctim3adweb.jpg

Whether or not he has "found Jesus" is irrelevant. Whether or not he poses a danger to others is irrelevant. Whether or not he can convince others to avoid gangs is irrelevant. What matters is he killed people and now he's going to pay the price. When he killed those people he forfeited his own right to live.

I would personally have given him the lethal injection and sleep like a baby afterwards.

His death was retribution for his actions. You can call it vengeance, or revenge, or whatever else you want. But in the end it's justice. Actually it really isn't. He should have been killed 20 years ago. Justice would be if they killed him, then revived him 4 times and then let him die. Or if they were to kill 4 people he loves right in front of him, and then kill him painfully and slowly.

Sorry about re-posting the photos. I only read the first page of the thread before I responded.

Don't kill citizens, don't get killed by the society whose citizens you kill. This is a pretty simple concept, even for the underprivileged, abused, neglected, aggressive, uneducated or otherwise societally victimized.

Tookie was smart enough to understand this very simple concept. He took his chances, he lost.

And so we get back to my first post. If your view of justice is "blood calls for blood" then it makes sense.

Mine isn't.

Justice dictates that those who murder people in cold blood die for their actions. To claim anything other than this only shows that you don't comprehend the meaning of the word "justice".

It doesn't matter if it stops other people. It only matters that it stopped this one. It doesn't matter if he is a danger to others in the future. It only matters that he murdered someone. It doesn't matter if he has reformed, found god, changed his ways, etc. All that matters is he took the life of others and as a result must give up his own life in return.

This is justice and there's no avoiding it. Nothing will change this fact and no amount of attempts to paint it dirty by calling it vigilantism, thuggery, or vengeance will make it any less justice.

In fact if you look up the word justice in the dictionary, it should have a photo of "Tookie" Williams with needles in his arms while getting his lethal injection.