The senior partner of the law firm has to leave town, so he
entrusts a difficult criminal defense to the young associate. The
kid is thrilled to have this chance to prove himself and sure
enough, he gets their man acquitted. In his excitement, he fires
off a telegram to the senior partner at his hotel: JUSTICE HAS
TRIUMPHED. The next morning, he finds a telegram from the old man
at the top of his In box: APPEAL AT ONCE.
This story comes back to me in pondering the fate of Tookie
Williams. Williams, a co-founder of the notorious Crips gang, was
sentenced to death in 1979 for four murders, including three
members of an Asian family who ran a convenience store. He always
claimed that he was innocent of those crimes and in recent years
his outward sincerity won him many supporters, including a number
of high-profile celebrities. The last month, in particular,
featured a cacophony of special pleading by this claque, mostly
directed at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had the power to
grant clemency. It was their contention that justice had no more
triumphed in Tookie’s conviction than it had in O.J. Simpson’s
acquittal.
To be forthright, I must confess that I share their skepticism
of this verdict. The witnesses who testified against him were all
criminals who benefited from their testimony. Additionally, none of
them are alive any longer. And in the case of the last three
murders, the Asian family of convenience store owners, even the
witnesses did not claim to have seen the act. They merely testified
that he had boasted of the shooting. As ghoulish as it is to have a
gang culture in which crowing about murders is a sign of virility,
the fact is that plenty of punks claim to be the authors of grisly
unsolved killings just to promote their fearsome repute. This is
hardly the quality of evidence that one hopes to see in a capital
case.
Yet I do not believe that clemency was indicated. Because we can
say with absolute certainty that this man was a murderer, whether
or not he ever pulled a trigger. Creating the Crips and leading
them is by definition conspiracy to kill. The Crips, in his day
even more so than now, are a savage conclave bent on ruling their
turf by the sword, and the bloodier the sword the better. An awful
lot of body bags have been invested in carting off Crips handiwork.
Do we need to find that Eichmann physically killed a person to
condemn him for the death of millions? Should we free Saddam
Hussein since he had henchmen do all his dirty work?
True, this would not have been a legitimate argument in advance
of a verdict. The jury would not have been justified to convict him
of those murders simply because they thought he deserved to be
reckoned a murderer for birthing the Crips. Their job was to weigh
the evidence of the particular charges. But once they made their
call, there was no moral obligation on us to undo their decision,
even if we questioned their judgment. To be moved by a moral
impetus to contest a verdict requires a firm determination that
“this man is not a murderer.” No one could say that of Williams,
inventor of a killing machine that draws blood constantly, scarring
our major cities.
If it is true that he was a profound penitent, that his lectures
and his children’s books have been effective in curbing violence,
then this is certainly laudable. If we preach a gospel that
precludes murder from redemption because the victim’s life cannot
be retrieved, then we remove from the one-time murderer any
motivation to restrain himself from killing his next annoyer.
Instead, we hearken to one of the first stories in the Bible, where
Cain, although banished as a penance, was given the opportunity to
repair the rest of his life and achieve a measure of redemption.
His children built cities (Genesis 4:17), invented the system of
mobile cattle herding (4:20), instrumental music (4:21) and
metalworking (4:22). Indeed, according to the Jewish tradition,
Noah’s wife was Naamah, a descendant of Cain, which makes him our
maternal grandpa.
Williams is gone now; let the heavens do the judging from here
on out. But if there is all this unconsummated celebrity energy in
the atmosphere, put it to work. Let that desire for positive
change, to fix problems rather than surrendering to them, to seek
repentance and redemption over vengeance and vindictiveness, be
channeled. It should be directed into the saving of all the Crips
and all the Bloods; through a combination of open-door ministries
and crunching police work we can eliminate these gangs altogether.
Now is the time: justice has triumphed and the weather is
clement.
