This odd piece is linked on the L.A. Times‘ main page, just below the main news story about Stanley “Tookie” Williams’ execution. Apparently penned by a news staff writer, Steve Lopez, it’s marked neither as news nor op-ed. So does it speak for the Times? Perhaps:

His anti-violence books and speeches were too little, too late, and the methodologizing of him was as unconvincing as the Nobel nominations.

But his execution was a macabre spectacle in a nation that preaches godly virtue to the world while resisting a global march away from the Medieval practice of capital punishment.

I would have had no problem leaving Williams locked up with his regrets and haunted by his deeds for the rest of his natural life.

I watched a man die today, killed by the state of California with institutional resolve, and wondered what we gained.