The Big Fat Kill

It's still a difficult thing for me to wrap my mind around...A state-sponsored execution. The gathering of witnesses, journalists and family members into a small, white room to watch a state employee poison someone. And then, once it's over, we publish little bits of human interest data in the newspaper - he died at 12:35, his last meal was turkey but he wasn't hungry, he mouthed a message to his family before he died, the nurse had trouble finding a vein and wound up drawing blood by accident...

It's just wrong, people. And the fact that it's supported by greiving widows has nothing to do with anything. I'm just tired of reading these endless pro-death penalty diatribes that always come back to the same points...The families want justice. The guy was guilty, and his crimes were horrible. He never said "I'm sorry." Who gives a shit? I don't care if Stan "Tookie" Williams was guilty. It certainly seems like he was, but I can't be 100% sure. The LAPD has certainly framed innocent men before, and I"m certain they would have been particularly motivated to convict the head of the Crips.

I also don't care to hear about the gory details of his crimes. Yes, he shot a young woman in the face. Yes, he shot a convenience store employee, a young man named Alfred Owens, in the back when Alfred was lying on the ground, cowering in fear. And, to be perfectly honest, despite his much-publicized "redemption" (the name of the Jamie Foxx TV movie about him), he didn't seem terribly remorseful about killing these people. In fact, though he worked to bring peace to inner city Los Angeles by brokering a truce between gangs, his legacy will probably do just as much to romanticize "thug life" as it will to put it to an end.

But, again, so what?

Here's my biggest problem, and it's not just about the death penalty either. I fear that we no longer legislate rationally in this country. Laws don't seem, to me, to be beased on real-world practicality any more. Americans generally seem to believe that the law should reflect what feels right to them, rather than what actually works or makes sense as a universal blanket policy.

Abortion is another great example. We know perfectly well what happens when you outlaw abortion, because abortion has been outlawed in America before, and remains outlawed in many countries around the world. So we know, for a fact, empirically, then when you outlaw abortion, a number of negative consquences arise almost immediately - more abandoned children for an already-overwhelmed adoption and foster care system and risks to women's health who seek out unsafe illegal abortions. We know for a fact that this will happen. And yet, Americans continue to rail against legal abortion, because killing fetuses feels wrong.

Ditto the death penalty. We know it doesn't stop criminals from doing crime. We know it because crime rates, statistically, have nothing to do with the number of executions. Think about it...Is Texas the most safe state in the Union? Is it even in the Top 5? What about Virginia? Well, they have, by a large margin, the most executions. Why isn't it helping?

I've been watching a lot of old noir movies lately. These films always try to make the case for the possibility of execution as a strong deterrant to violent criminality. Again and again, killers and would-be killers discuss "The Chair" as their ultimate fear. In fact, in many of these films, the act of murder is directly connected to death by electrocution - if you kill someone and are caught, you will be executed.

This wasn't even true in the 1940's, and it's even less true now, when the vast vast majority of murderers live out their lives in jail, or even wind up paroled after decades behind bars. I understand why the Hollywood films of the 1940's backed up this myth about the death penalty, but why do we continue to delude ourselves to this day about its efficacy? It doesn't work...The threat of death doesn't stop people from killing one another. Period.

It doesn't stop a bereaved family member from feeling sad about their loss. It doesn't make us any safer, or even make us feel any safer, or provide the illusion of safety from violent crime. All it does is satisfy someone's bloodlust. Now, I can certainly understand the desire to kill a person who has killed your husband or brother or son. I get it. If someone killed a person close to me, I'd probably want that person dead. But that's a knee-jerk reaction. Hopefully, after some time had passed, and a person had come to terms with their loss, they would be able to heal without someone else having to die.

In the case of Stanley Williams, vengeance was ludicrously carried out 25 years after the initial crimes. Though I'm sure Alfred Owens and the Yang Family, Tookie's victims, are still missed by their families, isn't it just a bit absurd to kill someone in anger for revenge 25 years after their infraction against you? Isn't there a statute of limitations on wounded rage?

So, unless someone can provide me with a good, solid, practical reason that the State of California should be murdering people, I have no use for the death penalty. (And don't even bring up that crass "money-saving" angle. I don't consider state-sanctioned murder to be a budgetary option. And if we want to save money that's earmarked for prisons, let's let all the marijuana offenders go first.)

Oh, and one more point I almost forgot to make...

Clearly, Arnold Schwartenegger does believe that a man can be redeemed for his wicked past, regardless of whether or not he is completely honest about any previous transgressions. How do I know? Because of his ongoing support for family friend Kurt Waldheim.

Kurt Waldheim once ran the U.N. as Secretary General. In 1986, he was running for President of Austria, when it came to light that he had once been an active Nazi. Here's Tim Noah from Slate in 2003:

In 1944, Waldheim had reviewed and approved a packet of anti-Semitic propaganda leaflets to be dropped behind Russian lines, one of which ended, "enough of the Jewish war, kill the Jews, come over." After the war, Waldheim was wanted for war crimes by the War Crimes Commission of the United Nations, the very organization he would later head. None of these revelations prevented Waldheim from winning the Austrian election, but after he became president, the U.S. Justice Department put Waldheim on its watch list denying entry to "any foreign national who assisted or otherwise participated in activities amounting to persecution during World War II." The international community largely shunned Waldheim, and he didn't run for re-election.

Even after this fact came to light, and even after Waldheim falsely and publicly denied his involvement in any sort of Nazi atrocities (sound familiar?), Schwarzenegger continued their public friendship and professional association. For years now, he has refused to discuss Waldheim or his crimes in any sort of detail.

Is that the same Arnold Schwarzenegger who said that he couldn't commune Tookie's sentence because he wasn't sufficiently sorry for his crimes, and he didn't own up completely to what he had done? When has Kurt Waldheim publicly asked forgiveness for aiding in the extermination of 6 million Jews, Arnie?