Monday, December 12, 2005

No Clemency For "Tookie" Williams

We take no pleasure whatsoever in the fact that Stanley "Tookie" Williams is apparently going to be executed tomorrow morning. We do take some measure of satisfaction, however, in the fact that justice is finally going to be done, at least in part, for the families who have suffered so much because of this man.

Williams had nothing but contempt for the lives of his victims and those who loved them. He held their lives so cheap that he laughed about how one of them died. It would be a gross miscarriage of justice were he allowed to live out his years at taxpayer expense while the families of his victims live everyday with the pain he so callously and savagely inflicted.

Mr. Williams will die tomorrow. What will be done to him is just. The manner in which it will be done, having given him every opportunity to convince an entire series of courts that he doesn't deserve to die, will be compassionate. The state of California is giving Tookie Williams far, far more than what he gave those four innocent, terrified victims in 1979.

He should be executed as painlessly as possible and then completely forgotten. He should expect no better and indeed deserves far worse.