Death row inmate stirs spiritual debate
LOS ANGELES -- Day and night, a cadre of the condemned -- 3,500 men and 54 women -- await their fate on the death rows of US prisons.
But the life of a single convict scheduled to die by lethal injection at California's San Quentin prison on Dec. 13 -- Stanley ''Tookie" Williams -- has reignited a passionate debate among people of faith over accountability and punishment, forgiveness and redemption.
''There's a grass-roots buzz about it. There are a lot of people talking about it because of who he was here in Los Angeles," said Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer of Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, a large, predominantly black congregation.
Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist clerics and scholars said last week that the Williams case is fraught with ethical and moral implications.
How does a society weigh the lives of the four murder victims against the life of a convicted murderer who is genuinely reported to have reformed? How are accountability and forgiveness balanced? Even within religions, believers may disagree.
Williams, 51, cofounded the Crips, the lethal street gang. He was convicted of the brutal gun murders of four people in 1979, during two Los Angeles robberies.
But after nearly 25 years behind bars, Williams, for many people, has become an icon of redemption. He has written 10 children's books imploring youths to stay out of gangs. He has helped mediate gang treaties. His life has become the subject of a made-for-television movie, ''Redemption," starring actor Jamie Foxx. Williams professes his innocence.
The cover story in last week's Los Angeles Jewish Journal carried the headline, ''Should Tookie Die?" Across the state, placard-carrying demonstrators have implored Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency.
In this case, clemency would mean life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Challenging that stance, California law enforcement officials are calling on Schwarzenegger to allow the execution. Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley decried Williams as a ''cold-blooded killer."
Proponents of the death penalty say that whatever Williams's efforts at amending his life, while laudable, cannot overcome the debt owed for taking lives.
''Principally, from a conservative biblical approach, if you shed man's blood, by man your blood should be shed," said Kevin Lewis, an assistant professor of theology and law at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in LaMirada, Calif.
Lewis said that if the governor granted clemency, society, under the concept of retributive justice, would bear the consequences of the crime. He doesn't think it should be allowed in this case.
Lewis's views are at odds with the positions of many US religious leaders, including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the heads of mainline Protestant churches, and a number of Jewish and Islamic scholars.
Last week, for example, US Catholic bishops strongly reaffirmed their church's opposition to the death penalty. ''It is time for our nation to abandon the illusion that we can protect life by taking life," the bishops said.
In weighing decisions of life and death, the notion of repentance figures prominently in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Repentance is more than saying ''sorry." It is radically turning from old and harmful ways.
That is a problem in Williams's case. Last week, Williams refused to apologize for murders, because, he continued to say, he did not commit them.
Beyond theology, there are streetwise reasons for allowing Williams to live, said Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer, pastor of the Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, Calif.
To gang members, Tookie Williams is a hero, Ulmer said. ''If he's going to be a hero, let him be a hero as one who turned himself around," Ulmer said.
If Williams is executed, Ulmer said, gang members would ask why they should change at all. ''Why turn? Maybe it's better for me to spend the rest of my life running than it is to stop, slow down, and turn around," Ulmer said.
Rapper Snoop Dogg, once a member of the Crips gang, called yesterday for authorities to spare Williams as hundreds gathered outside the prison to protest against his planned execution next month.
''Stanley 'Tookie' Williams is not a regular guy; he's an inspiration," he said. ''All I want to say to the governor is it's about keeping this man alive because his voice needs to be heard."
