Stanley Tookie Williams dies tonight

Since 1973, 119 people in 25 US states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. (Wikipedia)

119 victims, wrongly convicted of the most heinous sort of crimes. Crimes that inspire shock, hatred, and bloodlust. Crimes that move prosecutors and spectators to focus singularly on a conviction, whether just or not. Someone has to pay. Someone has to die.

Maybe Stanley Tookie Williams was guilty of those 4 murders. Or maybe he wasn’t. But he’ll never have a chance to be number 120, regardless of what truth could possibly be revealed in the future. He’ll never finish Female Gangs: The Forgotten Gender or any other of the books he’s currently writing. He’ll never publish more children’s books that attempt to spare kids from following his path.

He’ll just be dead.

The message from the criminal justice system to those who would attempt to reform themselves: Don’t bother. Death is what we want, and death is what we’re going to get. But the death doesn’t end with the execution.

I remember being for capital punishment until high school, when I chose the topic for a research paper. In the course of my research I discovered flaws in the criminal justice system that have led to the murder of many Americans. I recall the number 13, as in 13 executions of people that were conclusively determined post-mortem to not have been guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted. An unknown number of those currently on death row may also have been wrongly convicted.

I was struck by the possibility that any one of us could become a victim of circumstance and be executed by the government, all the while professing our innocence to the deaf ears of a self-righteous and vengeful public. It was one of the first things on which I can remember taking a stand, and I haven’t changed my mind since.