Schwarzenegger denies Williams clemency plea

[rhino 0]

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So does locking him up...

wrong.. inmates kill other inmates all the time... try again.. They escape and kill people.. try again..

[rehmwa 2]

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I never said I was living in a fantasy world. But it is far easier to release a man from life imprisonment than bring back a dean one.

Whether we have a death penalty in a particular state or not, sentencing must be carried out swiftly. I think a complicated system of delays causes more damage to the effectiveness of the system than any other single issue.

Again, if it weren't for the appeals and delays and people waiting for 26 years, I bet there would be fewer death sentences total and even fewer like your single anecdotal. If judges and juries knew that a death sentence was really a death sentence, and not just some gesture that may or may not happen in a couple decades.

You really want to make progress in reducing the number of death sentences? Then make it immediate and make it visible.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Sen.Blutarsky 0]

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It would have been an error from the structure of the system.

Which would have resulted in the state-sanctioned killing of an innocent person.

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If you insist one must be zero, then you are living in a fantasy world.

I do insist that the number of persons who are executed but innocent of the capital crimes for which they are convicted *must* be zero or else we should suspend capital punishment until such time as we are able to guarantee zero executions of innocents. I applaud the former governor of my state, George Ryan, for placing a moratorium on capital punishment here unless and until we are certain there will be no innocent people executed.

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I admire your vision that simple men and women can be perfect 100% of the time all the time in all endeavors.

Do you support a moratorium on the death penatly or do accept that states may execute innocent people?


Blutarsky 2008. No Prisoners!

[Sen.Blutarsky 0]

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But it is far easier to release a man from life imprisonment than bring back a dean one.

Oh please don’t bring back the Dean one. Please!


Blutarsky 2008. No Prisoners!

[councilman24 36]

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If it isn't the governor's place to grant clemency, we wouldn't have a clemency procedure.

But it isn't the Governor's place to usurp the legislative decision to have a death penalty. He doesn't get to apply clemency JUST because he or any other portion of california citizens believe it's wrong. That would an elimination of the separation of powers. He DOES get to consider extenuating circumstances that courts either are able or aren't willing to consider.

He may even believe as you that all executions are wrong, but he shouldn't let that be his guide. The legislative body has enabled the death sentence, the courts have imposed it, and the governor can review all the other circumstances to decide clemency. But NOT just to overturn the legislative or judicial functions. THEN he would be doing wrong.

You fight is rightly with the legislature. Not with Arnold. In a small way, as a member of a city council, I routinely have to make render decisions that my personal views may find distasteful or in conflict with my own views BECAUSE the applicant has meant all the requirements imposed. Executive and judicial officials must set aside their personal opinions and feelings and apply the law with in their discretion. If Arnold commuted all death sentences because of an anti death penalty personal opinion that would be imposing his personal belief on those of the citizens of California expressed through their elected legislature. This is something we should fight against all the time.

Arnold DOES have a duty to apply clemency on a case by case basis as he sees fit. You may disagree with the individual merits of this case for clemency but you should not condemn Arnold for not imposing a blanket clemency. Just because he doesn't agree with you, or chooses to follow the direction of the legislature, doesn't mean he doesn't listen to you.

With all that said, with no apologies, admission, acceptance of wrongdoing, etc. I don't see clemency appropriate in this instance. Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are a dime a dozen. Below is the list of people who can nominate.

1. Members of national assemblies and governments of states;
2. Members of international courts;
3. University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;
4. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
5. Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
6. Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1) and
7. Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

Note 3, bold added. This is thousand and thousands of people of all political persuasions.

"In recent years, the Committee has received well over 140 nominations. " Nobel web site.

Many nominations are for PR reasons. Such and Such, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize..... is the tag line for life.

Note, I haven't stated a position on the death penalty. I don't lose much sleep over its existence, but am concerned over the imposition on innocents by an imperfect system made up of imperfect humans.

I'm old for my age.
Terry Urban
D-8631
FAA DPRE

[airtwardo 6]

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Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are a dime a dozen.

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Even Hitler was nominated!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[SpeedRacer 1]

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i agree, i don't care if all the intelligent people in the world tell me it won't make any difference... if somebody kills a loved one of mine, i want that fucker dead... will it be vengence, yes of course it will be. Will it bring the dead person back, no. What it will do is make ME feel better, make me be able to go through life knowing who ever did it got what was coming to them

The purpose of the justice system is to stop crime, not to satisfy your personal feelings.

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[dorbie 0]

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Yes, he committed murders.

According to him he didn't.

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However, this is a man who has truly turned his life around.

Turned around by denying the murders he so clearly committed while refusing to show any remorse for them.

But hey, he wrote kiddies books. You're right, blasting a prone family man twice in the back and a woman in the face with a shotgun after killing her parents is small potatoes, forget the victims' families, think of the children!

The only question I have here is how many others did 'Tookie' murder in cold blood and get away with?

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I am disgusted with California and the governor.

Bwahaha!

I'm proud of him. Great call and eloquent rejection of the illformed arguments & outright lies presented in support of clemency.

[Nightingale 0]

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It would have been an error from the structure of the system.

Which would have resulted in the state-sanctioned killing of an innocent person.

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If you insist one must be zero, then you are living in a fantasy world.

I do insist that the number of persons who are executed but innocent of the capital crimes for which they are convicted *must* be zero or else we should suspend capital punishment until such time as we are able to guarantee zero executions of innocents. I applaud the former governor of my state, George Ryan, for placing a moratorium on capital punishment here unless and until we are certain there will be no innocent people executed.

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I admire your vision that simple men and women can be perfect 100% of the time all the time in all endeavors.

Do you support a moratorium on the death penatly or do accept that states may execute innocent people?

The above statements are a great example of the main reason I oppose the death penalty. As long as the death penalty continues, innocent people will be executed. The system is broken. Executing the guilty simply continues a system that also executes innocents. As long as there is a chance of the state-sanctioned killing of an innocent, there should be a moratorium on the death penalty. As long as we willingly allow state-sanctioned killing, the responsibility for the death of innocent people rests squarely on our own shoulders. The US is a government by the people, which makes every citizen old enough to vote responsible for what happens here.

If we could guarantee that every person executed was guilty, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it. I still wouldn't like it. However, we will never be able to make that guarantee.

Oh. And Rhino: Yes, I would still continue to oppose the death penalty in the scenario you describe... However, what's interesting is that in that situation, the criminal would probably not even be eligible for the death penalty due to a lack of special circumstances.

[billvon 2,416]

> I think a complicated system of delays causes more damage to the
>effectiveness of the system than any other single issue.

Unfortunately, they sort of go hand in hand with capital punishment. ANY option of an appeal or a reconsideration MUST be carried out before the punishment, since it is irreversible. Life imprisonment is not as much of an issue since the verdict can be overturned after the sentence has begun. Such an overturning still represents a miscarriage of justice, of course, but one that is easier to remedy.

>You really want to make progress in reducing the number of death
>sentences? Then make it immediate and make it visible.

Televised beheadings!

[Amazon 7]

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You two really have a low opinion of the human race - if only for those you don't know personally I guess those faceless masses just are a bunch of savages and idiots (or do you feel that way about all you best friends too? At least that would be consistent). Just animals slavering at the bit. I wish I was so enlightened/evolved and judgmental.

Yes I do, when people wish to act on the animal urges that rule the animal world.
The eye for an eye is a precept in Jewish law, Christ came here to show people how to evolve beyond that and learn to live with one another in peace.
This guy was a piece of hunam excrement, he was removed from society 26 years ago. In the interim he helped remove some of the problems he and his kind brought to the streets. I beleive he should have remained removed from those streets. Isolate them from those of us who have learned to live with one another in peace. Rather than filling our prisons with someone posseing marijuana and other non violent criminals we need to put the violent and the people who abuse children away for life. Put them in a small cell with full plumbing so they never have to come out of thier hole again. At least this does not lower our society( a SUPPOSEDLY Christian one) to thier murderous level.
I keep seeing all these wonderful translations of the 10 commandments that say thouse shalt not murder rather than THOU SHALL NOT KILL. That seems to be a WONDERFULL way for people who get off on murdering other people for revenge to JUSTIFY thier own murderous lust.
I sure hope YOUR interpretation is right when you have to stand in judgement of your own life.
Christ did not teach that killing in any form is right.

[rehmwa 2]

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Do you support a moratorium on the death penatly or do accept that states may execute innocent people?

Every single decision and action in the universe has an error band - demanding perfection is nuts and those that do lose credibility in their arguments and come across as unable to think rationally.

However, the potential to execute an innocent is the only substantial argument people have for opposing the death penalty. And it's a strong one.

I'm more of a 'risk tolerance' type of person. That means the death penalty should be very rare and only in cases where the evidence is extremely compelling (which absolutists would call 'proof'). And still, that means accepting that it is inevitable that a state "may" someday execute an innocent person. That's a hard position to take, but applies in this particular case.

You have to ask yourself the question, is the payoff in removing these serious potential threats (and even that undefinable thing called "deterence") worth the net sacrifice to society. And can you answer that question without personalizing to yourself with nonsense questions like (how would you feel if it was you/yours/etc)? This is about an overall effect, not emotions.

If you can't divorce a decision about the good of all from your personal emotions on the subject, then you can't make an unbiased decision. Note how both sides of the argument point fingers and call each other emotional in their positions (these people want REVENGE, those people are crying about the death of "someone's son", here's a single example and "That proves my POINT, dammit") - you can personally come up with either viewpoint. Getting there rationally instead of emotionally is more important to me than the actual answer though.

I personally see the moratorium position, but I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. A death penalty would have a social net payoff if done timely and only for very heinous crimes with strong proof.

However, what we are doing today as a result of this conflict is not worth having the death penalty. The delays and cost and inaction, etc, make the social payoff worthless.

So, we either do it in an effective manner, or we just do away with it and pay to lock these people up for life with others like them.

BV - Yes, have the executions televised. Beheadings are nuts today. Painless and non-messy death sentences will work. We aren't "punishing" the guilty, we are removing them from society. Stop adding the stigma of revenge to the argument, that's mob mentality.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[rehmwa 2]

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I sure hope YOUR interpretation is right when you have to stand in judgement of your own life.
Christ did not teach that killing in any form is right.

I'm not so sure why you add the religious cynicism to an argument that is about criminal justice and the application of a specific penalty.

But my interpretation is that people are generally decent, I don't expect the worst in people until they show it, as individuals. That is much different than stereotyping people as bad and judging them without one to one interaction.

So I also hope my interpretation is right. It means I have hope for people. It much better than going through life thinking the worst in everybody.

Look above, my position on the death penalty is that the way we apply the death penalty is broken. We have to either fix it or delete it. I see little hope in fixing the application while there are emotion-bound zealots out there on both sides of the issue. So you should win this one ion my mind. Just for all the wrong reasons.

But in the end, aren't we all a bit machiavellian?

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[rehmwa 2]

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This guy was a piece of hunam excrement,

Don't you mean Hunan Excrement? I think it's a beef dish, kind of spicy.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Sen.Blutarsky 0]

Of all the regular posters to this forum you are the one whose views I most often agree with, perhaps it’s because I detect that we are both practical midwesterners who aren’t afraid to roll up our sleeves and get a little earth under our fingernails if that’s what a job calls for.

In respect of this thread I also agree with most of what you have posted, including the conclusion that the capital punishment machinery in our country is broken and requires attention.

Our views diverge, however, on accepting an “error band” which would allow an innocent person to be executed under plausible circumstances. Already in Illinois we have removed a significant number of persons from our death row and released them into our general population because compelling evidence surfaced well after their sentencing which established beyond all reasonable doubt these people did not commit the crimes for which they had been condemned to die.

If and when the day arrives when there is no plausible error band for administering capital punishment in Illinois then I will be in favor of reinstituting application of the death penalty here. Until then however I will continue to support the moratorium on capital punishment and to urge those who work in my state’s government to reform our system of criminal justice on a number of levels even if this means that I have to get a little dirt under my fingernails.


Blutarsky 2008. No Prisoners!

[TheAnvil 0]

The same Nobel Peace Prize awarded to then terrorist-in-chief Yassar Arafat?

From Boortz today:

Since the press won't bring you up to date, perhaps we can help out. Tookie was convicted of murdering 7-11 clerk Albert Owens by shooting him twice in the back with a shotgun. Tookie bragged to his friends afterward that "you should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him," and then laughed about doing it. Then there was the Yang family. Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang, and their daughter, Yee Chen Lin were immigrants from Taiwan...and they ran a motel in South Central Los Angeles. That was, until Tookie came on the scene. On March 11, 1979, Tookie kicked down the door to the motel office and shot all three and killed them, again with a shotgun.

So off Tookie went to death row. But if you listen to the media, we're supposed to believe Tookie became an angel in prison, right? Wrong...let's take a look at the Tookster's prison record and his "conversion." But wait...if you listen to the Hollywood left, we're supposed to believe Tookie was a model prisoner...he's reformed! He's renounced his killing ways! Not if you look at the facts.

In 1981, Williams was caught beating up an other inmate with his fists, and ignored orders to stop. In 1982, Williams refused to an order to line up...and told a guard "you'll get yours boy, I can do anything now because I know what the gunmen will do...one of these days I'll trick you boy." Twice that same year, Tookie attacked guards with chemical substances. In 1984, Tookie was back to beating up another inmate...and didn't stop until a guard fired a warning shot. Also in 1984, Williams was caught making out with a female visitor. He told the guard then "you are looking around too much and that's not your job. I have dusted many officers on the street, one more would not make any difference." Sounds reformed to me. But there's more...1986...he beat up another inmate. 1988..he was stabbed in retaliation for a stabbing he ordered of another inmate. 1991...Tookie was again caught beating up another inmate. Same thing again in 1993.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[Michele 1]

All while writing children's books... ... ...

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[justinb138 0]

You left out the planned escape that would have involved killing about 3 guards.

[Nightingale 0]

Just to clarify the timeline:

The last time Tookie Williams was disciplined for involvement in a fight was July 6, 1993.

He began to speak out against gang violence towards the end of 1993 and began work on his books.

In 1997, he posted a public apology on a website denouncing many of the things he did regarding the Crips and gang violence. His first book was published in 1997.

So, no. He was not writing childrens books while he was getting into fights in prison.

[rehmwa 2]

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If and when the day arrives when there is no plausible error band for administering capital punishment

By definition, if you can't concede there is any good (of any amount) to be had in trade for the 'error band' you have to take a total position on it. Taking errors to zero is impossible. Zero erros for the rest of time is impossible, one error or 10 errors of a thousand is something to discuss.

But that means you can't have any exception to your position. No matter what the crime. No matter how personal. No matter how compelling the evidence. Even in your daily life. It means you can't justify a killing in self defense or defense of a loved one. It means you can't justify mercy killing. It means you can't condone any form of suicide. It means lifetime sentences no matter how much money it costs.

Taking action of any kind is the hardest and bravest thing to do. It mean accepting your errors for the greater good. We have a system that defers action to "anybody else". It's not getting any better. It resulting in quarter decade delays in sentencing and actual punishment.

That a very strong and extreme position you have when you look at it in totality. I don't think I'm strong enough to take that position. Either from a cold and logical point of view, or an emotional standpoint.

In any case, nice discussion, even for a bunch of dumb old hicks in 'flyover' land without any substantive intelligence or sophistimuhcation.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Nightingale 0]

Capital punishment has nothing to do with self defense. With self defense, you must use appropriate force, meaning, you can't go overboard and shoot someone who didn't present an immediate, imminent threat of death/great bodily harm. If we held capital punishment to the same standard, it would fail, because we are not in imminent danger from these prisoners. Locking them up for life removes the threat from society, and therefore is appropriate force. Anything more is no longer self defense.

[rehmwa 2]

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Then there was the Yang family. Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang, and their daughter, Yee Chen Lin were immigrants from Taiwan...and they ran a motel in South Central Los Angeles.

Well, maybe liberals don't care because these people don't look like the rest of us. They reserve that 'special caring attitude' especially for anyone they feel they can fool into selling them their votes. Plus, the Yangs were small business owners, capitalists, filthy rich facists if you will, and they must be punished for getting uppity.

(How am I doing Ian? Up to your standards?)

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[rehmwa 2]

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Capital ....defense.

Sorry Kris - I like you a bunch, but I'm done giving serious debate for the day and my point was a bit more than your simplification. Please leave a message at the tone....

BEEEEP

Edit: I'll give you this - "Locking them up for life removes the threat from society, and therefore is appropriate force." Is fine with me if that were true. Then it can degrade to just the costs to lock someone up vs (timely) execution, risks of escape, threat to other prisoners, etc. We all know today's drawn out process is expensive, so the $$$ discussion needs to be against quick justice, not today's mockery.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[SudsyFist 0]

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But that means you can't have any exception to your position. No matter what the crime. No matter how personal. No matter how compelling the evidence. Even in your daily life. It means you can't justify a killing in self defense or defense of a loved one. It means you can't justify mercy killing. It means you can't condone any form of suicide. It means lifetime sentences no matter how much money it costs.

I think you're carrying that one a little too far.

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[Botellines 0]

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Every single decision and action in the universe has an error band - demanding perfection is nuts and those that do lose credibility in their arguments and come across as unable to think rationally.

Why do you have to accept that "error band" when there is other options better for society?

A Life term sentence (without parole) is not a cake. It is a punishment as harsh as getting executed. Some people will say it is more of a punishment, some less, and other about the same, but the fact is that that person will pay the consecuences of his actions.
Even more, he can pay back the society by doing hard labour, earning moeny and giving it away to the victims of his crimes. Even better, that is cheaper than death penalty, because with the money he makes he can pay for his stay in prison. It gets even much better... If later on, it is proven that he was innocent, the state can release him right away, and give him some compensation for the mistake. Compensation that can be paid by whoever commited the crime he was accused for if found.

I try to see your point of view, but, really, I think that a life term of hard labour is much more convenient for society than death penalty.