Tookie, Our Hero

Interesting LA Times article advocating the death penalty for Stan "Tookie" Williams, the co-founder of the crips, reformed children's book author, nobel peace prize nominee on death row, awaiting clemancy from Guvnor Arnold.

The first I heard on this case is my friend was working on a documentary to "Save Tookie." He got to hang out with Snoop Dogg, who is an old friend of Tookie.

I checked out the advocacy site for Tookie upon hearing about his case.

I looked at the site to find out what the guy had done. I couldn't find it anywhere, all the info was about how he writes books and how the prosecution was racist, etc. Then, I finally found something squirreled away about how he was the co-founder of the Crips. Yipes!

I must say, I agree with a lot of the sentiment in the LA Times article, that the important thing for Tookie is to take responsibility and apologize to the victims, rather than insist upon his innocence and the racism of the system. I mean the guy started the crips for crissake, causing society more untold harm and misery than we can probably imagine.

There is a larger issue about justice as retribution or rehabilitation...although he's done some good things while in jail, it does not exactly seem clear that he is rehabilitated....and another issue with the legitimacy of capital punishment in general.

We shall see....