merrill whatley

In the past few hours, California Governor Schwarzenegger officially denied clemency for Stanley Tookie Williams. If you had no strong conviction regarding the death penalty, I believe being in the Governor’s position would be a tough one in that you would have to overlook 24 years of court rulings, jury decisions, California Supreme Court decisions, etc., in order to come to a conclusion you felt was technically defensible. That is to say I wish this Governor had a strong anti-death penalty conviction.

Not because this person “deserved” the death penalty any less or any more than any other person who is or has been on death row. I just wish California would get ahead of the curve on this one (compared to most of the rest of the U.S.) and abolish the death penalty altogether. Aside from all the usual arguments against or for the death penalty that I’ve heard over the years, two things stick out for me:

1. When I lived in Alabama, some candidate was running for Attorney General. I can’t remember his name. One of his ads described how, as a judge, he presided over a case of a man who was accused of murder. The scene cut to a video of the murder victim’s sister, a sweet looking elderly woman who said, “I was there in the courtroom, and Judge (so-and-so) didn’t blink when he sentenced that man to death.” She became steely-jawed and narrow-eyed about mid-statement. (Keep in mind this ad was in support of the judge.)

Seeing this woman made me ill. This sort of revenge does something unkind to a person (not that losing someone to murder doesn’t). I know this is a can of worms and I don’t know if I have the eloquence at the moment to argue it all the way out, but I can say for certain that:

a) I would want revenge on anyone who hurt anybody that I care about;
b) I think most anyone would honestly say the same; and
c) that’s exactly why we don’t take care of these things ourselves.

The reason we don’t take revenge because we are not the murderers. Yet I believe that the death penalty is revenge, and we are the ones doing it, through the State.

2. When we were in London a few weeks ago, we were speaking with a man who is involved in the UK Government. He pointed out that somewhere around 80% of the British public would actually support capital punishment but that it will never come to a vote in Parliament. The reason, boiled down to one idea: the country is civilized, and the death penalty is not.

If a person commits murder, therefore breaking the primary rule that allows us to be a civilization in the first place, they must face punishment and, if they are willing to be party to it, enter rehabilitation. And they do. It’s not that we owe it to the murderers to attempt rehabilitation, it’s that we owe it to ourselves as a civilized society.

So I feel that tonight just after midnight Pacific Time will be yet another sad moment. For the man dying, for the families of his victims, for California, for the country, and so on.