Executing change
In Tookie's redemption may lie our own.

By Steven T. Jones

REDEMPTION IS A strangely foreign concept to most Americans, even though it underlies some of this country's most fundamental beliefs, from the idea that our national virtues excuse the sometimes brutal means by which we've achieved greatness, to the notion that an indolent alcoholic can find God and become our 43rd president.

Redemption is also the title of a film about the life of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, who has triggered my contemplation of what it takes to achieve redemption.

Williams is scheduled to be executed by the state of California – that is, all of us – on Dec. 13. It is perhaps the most significant execution of our era. Williams isn't just a man of great influence; he's a powerful symbol of lingering racial disparities, the gulf between American and world public opinion, the hope that reason can overcome violence, and redemption.

Overheated rhetoric colors both sides of the debate about Williams's execution, which only Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can now stop. One side calls Williams a cold-blooded and unrepentant killer still rolling with the criminal Crips street gang he founded. The other casts him as a heroic figure who has atoned for the sins he did commit by preaching peace to would-be gangbangers, a martyr framed by a racist justice system who will die innocent of his convicted crimes.

I don't know if he's guilty of murder, or if that's been fairly proved beyond a reasonable doubt. It's tough for anyone to know, even after spending hours poring over his case, as I have. Reasonable people with open minds can review the evidence and arrive at different conclusions, just as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did earlier this year, when a majority voted for death but nine judges found fatal flaws in Williams's trial.

Yet I strongly believe we should spare Williams's life, whether or not he's guilty of four murders. I do philosophically oppose capital punishment, but I also accept that mine is a minority view in this democratic system. Still, there are good reasons for not killing Williams that this society and this governor must consider.

For the redemption of Tookie Williams is connected to the redemption of the United States of America.

• • •

Consider for a moment how Williams's tale parallels our own.

As a boy, he moved from Louisiana to the strange new world of South Central Los Angeles, a hostile and unfamiliar terrain where he had to be tough to survive. He used violence to attain power and then more violence to expand that power. Eventually, violence just became a way of life, something he associated with his own survival.

Just as we glorify our wars, Williams saw virtue in the army of "street soldiers" he created. Williams later wrote that he thought he was helping marginalized black youth finally attain the power they deserved.

Eventually, we all have our setbacks. Williams went to prison, and Americans went to Vietnam. They were bitter defeats, yet both emerged unbowed and determined to wield power as they always had before. Imprisoned or not, Williams was still the leader of the Crips, a towering, fearsome figure. And the current administration hasn't let the lessons of Vietnam interfere with its invasion of Iraq.

In a one-on-one fight, there was nobody Williams couldn't defeat. Yet he was also part of a bigger system he couldn't entirely control. And when he broke that system's rules, he found himself isolated. Determined to break him, San Quentin State Prison officials kept Williams in solitary confinement for six long years.

During that time, Williams had time to reflect on his life, on his power, on the role of violence and retribution in his communities and in the modern world. And he became a changed man, speaking out, writing children's books, using his power to renounce the violence he had used to attain it. Whatever his motives, Williams convinced an untold number of young people around the world not to follow in his footsteps, for which he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He sought redemption.

The United States also finds itself isolated right now, scorned around the world for launching an illegal war with predictably disastrous results, for refusing to cooperate with other countries on problems like poverty and global warming, and for breaking international rules with crimes like torture, extortion, and the aiding and abetting of tyrants. And, yes, for continuing to execute people long after the rest of the civilized world (including our governor's native Austria) has given up this barbaric and ineffective form of justice.

In our isolation, we haven't yet learned the lessons that Williams did. But it isn't too late.

• • •

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation – Schwarzenegger added "Rehabilitation" to that reorganized agency's title earlier this year – was just finishing up its final investigation of Williams last week when I spoke with department spokesperson Terry Thornton. The report is supposed to help the governor make his clemency decision – although he announced days later that he would also hold a closed-door clemency hearing for Williams Dec. 8, an unusual and hopeful move.

Thornton confirmed that prison officials would indeed make a point of Williams's continued association with the Crips on death row, and the fact that he has refused to go through the "debriefing" process, interviews designed to extract intelligence on gangs and their members, which Thornton said is intended "to promote institutional security and help law enforcement investigate crimes."

In other words, those leaving gangs must rat out their former associates and cooperate with the cops before the justice system considers them redeemed. Williams has used a different strategy, renouncing violence but using his influential position to convince gang leaders to adopt "peace protocols" to prevent them from destroying each other and their communities.

"I underwent many years of soul-searching and re-education, without 'de-briefing' (another word for 'snitching'), without a broken spirit and without violating my moral convictions," Williams wrote in a Nov. 19 column for Final Call, a Nation of Islam publication.

Right or wrong, "snitching" is seen as an unforgivable sin by many of the very people that Williams is trying to reach. So it could be argued that Williams has reached more people, saved more lives, and done more good by refusing to partner with the authorities, even if it's caused those authorities to now argue for his death.

"I don't know that I buy that argument," Thornton responded.

Clearly. But it's equally clear that the California constitution doesn't give cops, prosecutors, judges, or jailers – those now arguing hardest against letting Williams live in prison – the authority to make this decision. Clemency is a political decision, one made not on narrow legal grounds but on broad societal considerations.

"It should be enough that he has expressed remorse and apologies for his past involvements without requiring that he become an informant for the state that seeks to execute him," former state senator Tom Hayden wrote in a Nov. 21 letter to Schwarzenegger, urging him not to be swayed by the dogma on either side of the capital punishment debate.

Williams needn't be condemned for a decision that, in other contexts, might be seen as a mark of courage and integrity. In fact, there is no litmus test for clemency, an absolute power that – because of the tricky politics of capital punishment – US governors have rarely used.

"No one can deserve or earn clemency," Austin Sarat, a professor and author specializing in capital punishment, told me. All someone can do is meet some minimum threshold that would make clemency a plausible decision – such as showing rehabilitation, the possibility of errors or racism in their trial, or a societal interest in showing mercy – something Sarat said clearly exists in the Williams case. In other words, the governor can spare him if he wants to.

"This case is as much about Arnold Schwarzenegger as it is about Tookie Williams," he said.

And by extension, this case is about Americans circa 2005. Are we ready to break the cycle of violence that has ensnared our nation? Will we continue to stubbornly assert American exceptionalism and disregard world opinion? Can a man or an entity that has attained power through violence ever be forgiven? Sarat posed the big question as: "What is the state of grace and mercy as a value in the society in which we live?"

Or perhaps more simply: Do we believe in redemption?

We should, because someday we may need to convince the world that we've changed. Through redemption – either seeking or granting it – comes the greatest hope for the American experiment. Violence won't vanquish our foes, be they gangsters or terrorists, but redemption is the path toward making them disappear.

E-mail Steven T. Jones at steve@sfbg.com.

Help save Tookie

Supporters of Stanley "Tookie" Williams have called for a national day of action on Nov. 30, which will include rallies at noon in front of the City Hall buildings in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and other cities, as well as a special screening of Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story at 7 p.m. that evening in the Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline, Berk. Go to www.savetookie.org/events.html for a complete list of events leading up to the scheduled Dec. 13 execution. That site, as well as www.tookie.com, also includes ways to learn more about the case and to contact the governor to ask him to grant clemency.