this morning, shortly after midnight, the state of
california executed stanley "tookie" williams for the
murder of 4 people in 1979, a crime which he says he
did not commit. williams, founder of the notorious
street gang the crips, was convicted almost 25 years
ago and had exhausted all legal appeals. arnold
schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of
california, personally rejected williams´ clemency
appeal and ordered that the murder of williams
proceed.

this appeal for pardon was based on the fact that
over the three decades williams has spend on death row
the prisoner was completely rehabilitated. he
renounced the gangster lifestyle which he had helped
to define. he authored award winning children´s books
warning against the dangers of gang violence. he was
nominated for the nobel peace prize because he opposed
every kind of violence, unlike mr. schwarzenegger who
authorized williams´ murder hiding behind the
shameful,cowardly veil of the law.

the state-sponsored murder of stanley "tookie"
williams, besides erasing a man´s very existence and
his dignity, makes a joke of the principle of
redemption through rehabilitation. here we have a man
who spent a quarter of a century in vociferous
denunciation of violence and in the end this counted
for nothing.

the very practice of capital punishment is abhorrent
and shall be regarded in the annals of history as
evidence of the barbarism of the societies that allow
its practice. indeed, every single member of western
civilization has rejected state-sponsored murder.
every member, that is, save for the united states of
america. the united states is also one of the very few
countries in the world that allows for the execution
of children. we are in good company here: this
barbarous fraternity consists of china, congo, iran,
nigeria, pakistan, saudi arabia, and yemen. indeed,
america is the most enthusiastic murderer of children
in the world: 19 children were executed in america
between 1990-2003.

scientific advances in recent years have revealed that
many innocent people have been exectued. 122 wrongly
convicted people have been released from death rows
across america since 1973. how many more innocents
were not released and met tragic, criminal deaths. a
few brave leaders, such as governor ryan of illinois,
have been courageous enough to call an end to the
cruel practice of state sponsored murder (mr. ryan
commuted the death sentences of every single death row
inmate in his state to life imprisonment) but on the
whole, american leaders refuse to remedy this sad
situation out of fear of losing the confidence of
conservative voters.

a german teenager wise beyond her years recently
commented to me that whenever a government carries out
a crime with the approval of the people, however
passive that approval may be, then all of the people
of that society share in the blame for that
government´s crimes. therefore, every american who
supports the practice of state sponsored murder has
the blood of innocents on their hands.

the hypocrisy of half of the population (polls say
about that many people support capital punishment) of
my country makes me absolutely sick. these morally
ambiguous people often quote the bible´s "eye for an
eye, tooth for a tooth" mantra in defense of the death
penalty. the irrelevance of a 2000 year old work of
fiction aside, doesn´t that same book hold as one of
its central tenets that "thou shalt not kill?"

once again i find myself sickened by the actions of a
country that history will judge as the greatest
perpetrator of injustice in the world in our age. i
find myself frustrated and almost at times ashamed to
be a citizen of such a country. and i find that the
argument i have often used to comfort myself- that no
matter how horrendous the government and policies of
the united states may be, the american people are an
overwhelmingly compassionate, warm, generous bunch-
crumbling in the face of such facts as public
acceptance (at least 50% of the public, in any case)
of state sponsored murder.

the united states of america is the world´s greatest
practitioner of state sponsored murder. there is
murder in iraq and afghanistan in the name of fighting
terror by inflicting far greater terror and killing
far more innocents that any osama bin laden could ever
dream of, murder of people in poor agrarian societies
by agricultural subsidies to rich american food
producers, murder by greedy financial institutions who
impose conditions designed to enrich a powerful elite
while keeping billions of others in poverty, the
murder of the very environment of the earth by being
the only western nation to reject the kyoto protocol
on global warming- and the list could go on
indefinitely.

if i diverge greatly it is only in the service of my
point. how on earth, in 2005, can a nation which
claims to espouse the lofty ideals of "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness" allow such state
sponsored murder to continue? it is a great shame that
history will judge us for. with great shame we should
judge ourselves for it.

and so back to mr. williams. when the executioners
attempted to insert the injection tube in his arm, a
process that normally takes 2 minutes, they needed 11
minutes. williams shook his head in frustration and
asked "are you guys doing this thing right?" stanley
"tookie" williams was 51 years old. he proclaimed his
innocence until the very end.

-BRETT