Justice, Served Cold

In about 4 hours, the state of California will execute Stanley "Tookie" Williams, founder of the Crips street gang.

Williams is being executed for the murders of four people in 1979. Even though he denies committing these murders, it is likely he committed other murders during his time with the Crips. In 36 states, including California, murder in the first degree is a crime punishable by death. Thus, Williams is being executed in accordance with the laws of the land.

Problem is, this is a law that stinks to high heaven.

The death penalty is a tragedy, an injustice and an affront to our system of justice. It has never been shown to be an effective deterrent against crime, is ultimately more expensive than incarceration without possibility of parole and is an irreversible sentence that cannot be rectified in the event that an innocent person has been wrongly convicted. Despite the rigors of our justice system, it is not perfect. So long as one innocent person faces the possibility of execution, the death penalty can never be just.

My feelings about the death penalty come mostly from my deeply held religious convictions. I believe that all people can be redeemed, a belief God held so strongly that he sacrificed his only son in support of it. Certainly some people have committed crimes so heinous that they must never be allowed to live freely in society. This does not mean that these people are irredeemable, only that society's best interest can be served without sending these people to their deaths.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams is, by all accounts, such a man. He committed horrible crimes, undoubtedly. While in prison, Williams worked to redeem his crimes by communicating to young people the horrors and pitfalls of gang life. He has been nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to keep children from joining gangs and going to prison.

And California has decided that this man must die. May God save California. May God save Stanley Tookie Williams. May God destroy the death penalty, once and for all.