Capital Punishment is A Black Penalty

By Donna J. Warren

Stanley "Tookie" Williams is America's Strange Fruit

Neither does America.

Why do they want Stanley "Tookie" Williams executed? Is it because he was convicted of murdering 4 people in a kangaroo court? In kangaroo courts black people, innocent and guilty, are convicted and sentenced to death all the time.

Tookie, black and from the "ghetto" was predictably found guilty by an all white jury. White Americans, intrinsically racist, lynch "strange fruit" in America's courts of law. This all white jury, these 12, are the same people who with local, state, and federal governments, instituted Jim Crow Laws denying freedom to newly emancipated blacks. If American courts ever attempt to be fair, no black person would ever stand trial in front of 12 white Americans. White serial killers are not sentenced to death. Capital punishment is a black penalty.

Was Tookie's all white jury incensed that the names of the victims were Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang and Ye Chen Lin? Maybe Albert Owens but America has no problem with the deaths of Asians Yang, Yang, and Lin. If so, America would show remorse over killing 2,000,000 Vietnamese in the Vietnam War, and dropping the A Bomb on hundreds of thousands at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

CNN recently took a poll, unscientific but a poll all the same. 65% of the respondents said Tookie must die. Not surprising!

Blood thirsty America sanctions murder when people of color are involved + look at the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead with no remorse by America. Killing people of color has never been a problem for America. It's how America became America. Murdering Tookie and ensuring ghetto blacks continue to fall into the pit of gang life is America. America cannot let Tookie live for to do so means America cares about the young people who are driven into the gang life, and we know by empirical evidence that that is not so. Empirical evidence is everywhere festering in the form of slums and tenements unfit for human habitation, schools rat infested and infused with dirty toilets, nonexistent health care. Katrina where black babies floated in putrid waters and thousands of people are still unaccounted for!

America needs the illusion of gang life to maintain the whole shebang of the prison industrial complex + prisons, judges, police, lawyers, counselors, etc., etc. It's big business and it meets America's goals to deny democracy and freedom to former slaves, the indigenous, and poor whites.

They say Tookie's not remorseful for the killings. Tookie says he's innocent. What kind of fool is remorseful for killings he didn't do? San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittendon wants Tookie to inform on his old friends. Informing on gang members would "rip my dignity out of my chest", Tookie says. I agree. Snitching is not only "undignified" but anathema to the truth. Only a liar admits remorse for something he did not do; only unprincipled cowards like Crittendon snitch.

Crittendon says he suspects Williams is orchestrating gangland crimes from his cell. But there's no proof. The prison industry will say anything to execute a black man. Stanley "Tookie" Williams, nominated repeatedly for the Nobel Peace Prize and the subject of the movie "Redemption" has an amazing intellect and a voice so strong that he has done what governments fail to do + make a difference in the lives of children left to squalor in the ghettos of America + without healthcare, a decent education, and even parents to raise them.

America, vicious, blood thirsty, and racist keeps the status quo of prisons, punishment, and inhumanity on the backs of those she fails the most.

Schwarzenegger could easily grant clemency for Tookie. The American Court could easily grant a new trial + one that isn't judged by 12 whites.

In August 2004 a committee of prison officials commended Tookie for his positive steps in the past 10 years. Yet "corrections" alleged on their website (before it was taken down one day later) that Tookie "firmly entrenched himself as the leader of the Crips at San Quentin, wielding power as his lieutenants and other minions were dispatched to carry out his objectives". Former warden Daniel Vasquez (warden at San Quentin from 1983 to 1993) said those remarks were "like corrections trying to drum up business for death row".

We pretend to warn children about the dangers of gang life but if Tookie is put to death, our pretensions will be exposed for the lies they really are. The emperor is wearing no clothes. If Tookie dies, we lose a voice who can speak to our children in ways we never could. If Tookie dies, our children lose!