I will write more later about the news this morning that Tookie Williams is dead. My daughter has been carefully following this case for weeks, keeping me up-to-date on the history and recent appeals. Shame on me for not being more informed. Here are some preliminary thoughts.
I killed Tookie Williams last night, while I was asleep. I didn't hold the syringe, but I helped. In a nation that starts its constitution "We the People," I must take responsibility for not doing more--for not speaking out, for being afraid to take a stand. Nearly every person that is executed in our country serves two sentences, firsta lengthy prison term as the variety of appeals are made and then execution for the same crime (s). Depending on the situation, we use different arguments to justify this taking of human life. Is it murder? I don't know. We may never know if it was a justified killing. What I do know is that as a citizen of this country, I participate in this act of life-taking.
As a citizen of another realm, I must ask what my king would say or do. Any "Bible believing Christian" knows that our Savior came to bring life and bring it abundantly. Giving life was and is the substance of Christ's mission--a plumbline by which I discern right thought, right action, right religion. It is the rubric by which I must be judged this morning in the aftermath of the life-taking reality of execution. Is execution life-giving for the victim, for the victim's family, for our society, for the defendent? And so as a Christian of conscience and as a citizen of the United States, I must confess my participation in the taking of a life, and ask myself and others why most of the western world has long ago given up execution as barbaric while the United States continues to authorize it? I'm ashamed of myself, the governor of California and our nation today. Once thought fictitious, today the terminator became all too real. Tookie Williams was terminated today, but his legacy may just be beginning--a legacy that I hope brings life.
plou
2 comments:
So you think that the western world has given up executions as being barbaric? What about the masses that have died under Sadam Huisen (sp)? Or is murder not the same as execution? Surely there are many countries who think nothing of putting their people to death. Sometimes I think execution should be legal but then who am I to judge? There's only One who can do that.
I think only that we have become so entrenched in violence that we have believed the myth that violence has redemptive powers. Violence begets evil.
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