Stanley Tookie Williams Part 2
I blogged briefly about Stanley Tookie Williams over here. To me much of this comes down to a question of whether you believe in the death penalty or not. If you are philosophically against the death penalty then it makes perfect sense to me why you would have a problem with ending his life.
But if you are not against it but still feel that he should be granted clemency I think that you need to give a better accounting for why then the writer did here.
He establishes a benchmark for his argument quoting Richard Land, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission:
“If you are going to support the death penalty, then you have to be as supportive of its equitable and just application,” Land said in response to a question I put to him. It is immoral to do otherwise, he answered, while pointing out that the poor and people of color are much more likely to be executed in this country.”
Now that is all well and good but the question is simple. Did Stanley Tookie Williams murder those people and the answer is that he was found guilty by a multiracial jury.
One of the things that bothers me about this case is why the celebrities who are asking for clemency for him are not doing the same for others on death row. If they truly find it to be objectionable and morally repugnant why do we only hear from them on the high profile cases.
Something stinks here. I am still not convinced that you can ever make up for murdering someone. You destroy a life and there is nothing that you can do to fix things afterwards.
I am disgusted by those who argue against his execution because of retaliatory threats made by gang members.
I don’t have any problem with people who oppose this on philosophical grounds, but if you do you better make it clear that you do for everyone and not just for one person because otherwise you are contributing to the alleged imbalance of justice we read about.
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