Put aside how you feel politically, morally or psychologically about capital punishment. Focus, instead, on the disconnect from reality that surrounded the extermination of Stanley Tookie Williams, former gang leader, at San Quentin State Prison last Tuesday. Was it just me, or did anyone else have one of those what-is-wrong-with-this-picture moments?
On one side you had a real-life convicted murderer who has partly redeemed himself through good acts while on Death Row. Think what you will about his criminal past, Tookie transformed himself in prison. Period. The only people who don't believe this are racists who can't imagine anyone but their rich white neighbors capable of a righteous lifestyle.
On the other side you had a make-believe "Terminator," who during his Hollywood career, left in his wake a body count to rival Falluja's. Anyone who has seen a Schwarzenegger film and not recoiled from the violence is either lying or in need of counseling. At the risk of sounding like Michael Medved, Arnold's coolly detached cinematic Cyborg bloodletting has warped millions of young (mostly male) minds and cheapened the value of life. One could argue that his "Terminator" films, like those by fellow GOP stooges Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson, have done more to glorify and commodify violence than Tookie's ghetto gang-banging.
Thus, the sight of a sexual harasser and Grade D actor like Arnold sitting in judgment on whether someone has "atoned" is a testament to just how twisted life has become. And what a chickenshit way to exterminate Tookie, under the cover of darkness, after midnight, so that the act will be buried in the news cycle, as more pressing stories — like the one that overtook his death on AOL about "the deep pain" of Naomi Watts — are tossed into the entertainment trough for the dull-witted drones who still think everything is just fine.
If the state is going to take on the role of death-dealer, it should have the courage of its convictions, do it out in the open in prime time, preferably on live TV, so that we can see what is taking place in our name. Put it on pay-per-view and use the profits to underwrite public education. It's guaranteed to be the box office smash of all time.
That's what this state murder came down to, isn't it? Those who celebrate the death penalty take it as a personal insult if you don't share their penchant for killing. They self-righteously proclaim, "Think of the victims' families!" As if that's who they're thinking about. They don't care about the victims' families. They want their ritual beheading. And Arnold gave it to them.
The Rude Pundit (rudepundit.blogspot.com) said it better than I: "If you spend your life acting like an amoral, gun-firing buffoon, why should anyone expect you to act differently as the governor?"
One simple, immutable truth determines the outcome for anyone on Death Row who is facing an execution date: If a politician has anything to do with the final decision, the convict will die. That's true whether they're guilty or innocent, whether they've "atoned" for crimes and expressed remorse or whether they're a perpetual pain in the ass.
Tookie's extermination recalled, for me at least, the case of Caryl Chessman, about whom I've just finished writing a book. Chessman was exterminated in May 1960 by gas on the same exact spot as Tookie Williams. Chessman, like Tookie, was an author who'd transformed himself during his long stay on Death Row. Unlike Tookie, Chessman's crimes left no one dead. Regardless, he paid the same price of admission.
Of Tookie, I share the view of Chessman expressed by San Quentin's chaplain. The chaplain, Byron Eshelman, wrote, "I believe that the state of California executed the wrong man." By that, Eshelman meant that Chessman may or may not have been guilty, but he was certainly "not the psychopath who had come to Death Row twelve years earlier." Eshelman watched Chessman change during his years on the Row. "I saw him grow and mature, and learn to channel the explosive forces within him into power for social good. From the viewpoint of our social understanding, his death was sheer tragedy. From the viewpoint of clinical psychology, his death was a terrible loss. From the viewpoint of Christianity, his death was a total negation of all that Jesus Christ tried to teach us."
