Everyone in Favor of Tookie Williams’ Execution Take One Step Forward

There are those who say Tookie Williams has not really changed. There are those who say “Twelve of his peers decided he deserved death.” I say if that’s your measuring stick, re-poll the jurors. Tell them what the founder of the Crips gang has done with his life in the years since they sentenced him to death.

One more question for those who are pro-death out there: Is there a “better” candidate for life imprisonment? No one in their right minds is suggesting that Williams go free- that the four murders he committed be forgotten. But allow him this small measure of grace- that he may spend his days helping others avoid his fate.

There is nothing on this Earth that is harder for a human being to do then to completely alter his seeming natural impulses. There is nothing harder and, at the same time, nothing more profound. Through the horrific acts of his youth, Tookie Williams was granted access to a changed perspective, a brand new way to understand the world- and by extension, himself.