All Tookie All The Time
Page B 4 of the LA Times features a photo of two "black activists". One is holding up a copy of the book "Life In Prison", which features a photo of our hero and points out that he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The caption also tells us that "The death row inmate was named king of the 29th Annual Kwanzaa Gwaride and Festival, to occur in L.A. on December 26." No indiction whether Tookie will get a day pass to attend.
posted by stewdog | 6:30 AM | Permalink
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3 comments
3 Comments:
I'm getting soooo tired of Saint Tookie. I'm very coldly and dispassionately anti-death penalty, but every time someone starts one of these campaigns, especially when it involves yammering on about how the condemned person has "redeemed" himself, I think I could almost pull the switch (or wield the hypodermic needle, as the case may be) myself. People, he's not scheduled for execution because he was a bad, unredeemed man. He's been condemned because he MURDERED some people. As for his "redemption," good for him; he can go to his death in the knowledge that he'll be welcomed into paradise.
I have great ambivalence about the death penalty. On a practical level, with the cost and length of appeal, it would be better to abolish it. I remember my advocacy class at Emerson college in 1977. I argued for it. The college was agast. For many, life is a far worse penalty. We can't seem to fairly and promptly apply it, so maybe its day has past.
PS Just what is a yyopqs?
I've never really been swayed by the "life imprisonment is worse than execution" argument. It seems to me that if something is worse than a punishment deemed "cruel and unusual" by its opponents, then a worse punishment--in this case, keeping a human being in a cage or claustrophobic cell for decades--must be more cruel and more unusual.
I'm much more open to the argument that we should be reluctant to grant the state the power to execute citizens. However, I think that argument might be more persuasive if some its most vocal proponents also didn't argue for the state having just about every other power and responsibility imaginable.
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