I was going to make this an update to my first Tookie Williams piece but Ed Morrissey’s compelling post called for a separate article on my behalf.

Ed is a rational anti-death penalty advocate:

Again, I oppose the death penalty, primarily on two grounds: religious and practicality. I don’t think the state should take a life unless the person represents a present threat to the safety and security of the public, or a threat to the national security of the US or our allies. I also don’t think that the death penalty saves us any money, and needlessly clogs our appellate courts with frivolous motions and delaying tactics. When we have the person locked up, he should stay locked up—and I mean locked up for good, and none of the Club Fed treatment, either. Three hots and a cot, and anything else depends on how well the prisoner behaves. That to me settles the entire case in a relatively expeditious manner without having twenty years of legal motions keeping the case alive.

Ed’s position holds a certain moral and practical attraction. And it is nothing if not consistent with his Roman Catholic faith for which he should be commended for adhering.

However, there is something deeper, more atavistic involved in society as a whole making a statement that taking a life in the fashion that Mr. Williams took 4 others will, after careful consideration and all due process, result in the forfieture of your own. It is more than justice. It is more than revenge. It is an accounting.

Ed believes that this accounting can be achieved by locking the perpetrator up for the rest of his life – true “life without parole.” I would say that first, this is a pleseant fantasy to believe this could be achieved. Already there is a growing unease among our intelligentsia and legal community that too many people are actually being given life sentences and, well, dying in jail. This New York Times article from 10/2/05 made me spit coffee through my nose when I read the headline:

TO MORE INMATES, LIFE MEANS DYING BEHIND BARS

It turns out that prosecutors and judges have been giving a wink and a nod to criminals when giving them a life sentence; they don’t really mean what they say. Now judges and even prosecutors are upset because mandatory sentencing guidelines have taken so much disgression away from them. Here’s what I wrote back then:

There’s a reason people are sentenced to life in prison. And while there may be a few exceptions to the so-called “Three strike” rule in sentencing (and these should be dealt with on a case by case basis) the fact is that sentencing guidelines are in place because too many judges and prosecutors think like the editors of the New York Times; that criminals are in jail not because they’re horrendously violent sociopathic thugs but because they are misunderstood by society or that they’re the wrong color or that they’ve spent time in jail and have actually “reformed” and gone straight.

This kind of thinking caused crime to skyrocket in the 1960’s – 1980’s. It wasn’t until legislatures and the Congress passed mandatory sentencing laws that crime finally began to drop. Yes judges complain they have little leeway in sentencing anymore. But that decision wasn’t taken in a vacuum. It was because judges routinely abused their positions to foist their ideas about crime and society on the rest of us that those laws were passed in the first place.

The point I would like to make to Ed and other rational anti-death penalty advocates, is that as a practical matter, life in prison is a non-starter. The forces at work to free the criminal and get him back on the street are growing not shrinking. When leading criminologists point out that 10 years is considered a long sentence in Europe, you know we are in trouble.

As for the moral argument – especially one involving doctrine – well, you have me there. But the idea that the death penalty is merely state sponsored murder or even just societal revenge is dead wrong. It is a trap door by which a healthy society rids itself of its diseased parts. This accounting is necessary not to deter crime or to give closure to the families of victims, but because it is a rational way to approach the simple problem of dealing with people who have demonstrated that they do not deserve to enjoy the fruits of living in our society – even Ed’s “three hots and a cot.” Who makes that determination? A jury of his peers, acting on our behalf, finding guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Ed does hit the nail on the head here:

If the celebrities want to do something about the death penalty, I’d suggest trying to convince Californians that LWOP means no release, ever, under any circumstances except innocence. They could start by ending their peculiar practice of promoting the murderers as heroes and ignoring their victims. Once the public no longer has to listen to ridiculous arguments about the brilliance and courage of people who shoot helpless victims in the back and can focus on the issues of the death penalty itself, then perhaps we can convince people that we can live without executions and all the lunacy they entail.

Well said and I would add something I mentioned in my last post; until we can figure out how to level the playing field in the criminal justice system for people of different economic backgrounds (not race), the death penalty should be a rarity indeed. It is a blot on the ideas of liberty and freedom that someone’s guilt or innocence can be gleaned by how high the stack of money they are able to place on the scales of justice.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has the react from blogs and MSM. She links to this powerful piece by Baldilocks who echoes some of my thoughts below about what Mr. Williams hath wrought in South Central LA and elsewhere:

Leaving aside those who oppose the death penalty for moral/religious reasons, few of you have seemed motivated to move into my South Central LA neighborhood to see what “Tookie” and his Crip co-founder Raymond Lee Washington (who’s burning in Hell right now) have wrought for the last thirty-odd years. And I know that you won’t be choosing to live here anytime soon. That’s understandable; however, don’t tell me that we should coddle these TERRORISTS like “Tookie” and those he created if you don’t have to put up with them. (Okay, you can tell me, but you can expect a barely polite response and that’s if I’m feeling generous.)

Secondly—and this is especially for people like Jeremy: black people are thinking, functioning humans who, when adult and without some actual mental deficiency that they can’t control, are just as responsible for their actions as are members of any other race of people. We’re not murderers by nature (that is, any more than any other set of humans are). Therefore, we don’t need a separate, lower standard of behavior in any area, whether it’s education, employment or criminal justice.

Holding Mr. Williams responsible for the activities of the Crips gang is something apparently beyond the capacity of the celeberities, apologists, and other Tookie supporters who ignore the role Mr. Williams’ creation has played in the sacking of inner cities.

The Anchoress has some surprising thoughts on coverage of Tookie and coverage of the new pope:

But when I heard on the radio the ubiquitous Jesse Jackson talking about Tookie’s “strength” as though he was some sort of martyr (Political Teen has video) I just couldn’t help thinking to myself…when Cardinal Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, he couldn’t BUY this sort of sympathetic coverage. While tonight we hear about how Tookie “did more good than harm,” all we heard last April was that the new pope was a hardcase – relentless and inflexible and probably mean, too.

That’s a thought.

Indeed.