Tookie??

[Allecto]

Tookie Williams was CONVICTED of killing only 4 people. Anyone who believes he only killed 4 is, IMO, a bit naive.

And Tookie's supporters, like Tookie, were not trying to get him off the death penalty hook. They wanted a complete pardon, and for him to live his life as a free man. I would rather see him dead. That may be bloodthirsty, but too bad.


And while he went to his grave protesting his complete and utter innocence, at his trail (amid his growling, long minutes of boisterous laughter, and other hideous remarks) he loudly told victim's family members and the prosecutors things like "You should have heard the noise he made when I shot him!" (insert more hysterical laughter here). I'm sorry, but children's books do not make up for Tookie's crimes.

[G.P.girl]

i don think they should have killed him. even though he did kill 4 people and he obviously isnt accepting responsibility or showing any remorse for it. right now he is doing more good alive than he is dead. while his childrens books may seem useless and dumb to you, they have kept hundreds of kids off the streets and from joining gangs. and thats wht we need isnt it? i'm not saying he should be let out of jail or given a reduced sentence or any kind of lesser punishment, he should have been kept in jail. but what good is he doing us now? and this just goes to show kids that even if you do screw up and then start doing better...well, you're gonna die anyway.

[Allecto]

i don think they should have killed him. even though he did kill 4 people and he obviously isnt accepting responsibility or showing any remorse for it. right now he is doing more good alive than he is dead. while his childrens books may seem useless and dumb to you, they have kept hundreds of kids off the streets and from joining gangs. and thats wht we need isnt it? i'm not saying he should be let out of jail or given a reduced sentence or any kind of lesser punishment, he should have been kept in jail. but what good is he doing us now? and this just goes to show kids that even if you do screw up and then start doing better...well, you're gonna die anyway.

I think he was keeping a lot less kids out of gangs than his gang was drawing in to them. And his message to kids was that you can commit heinous crimes and then go to your grave refusing to accept personal responsability for the lives you shattered. That you can taunt the survivors of your victims and brag of your crimes to friends, and then find God but never find it in you to apologize or express any remorse at all. He worked to try to form and maintain a gang and gang connections while he was still on death row, so there was no way he'd given up on gang life, and he really didn't try to make people believe he had. He refused to give up any active Crips, people he knew that were out there still murdering and recruiting young people. He continued to protect them. His own son has murdered for the Crips. Besides, those children's books... they're actually written by a WOMAN who was just 'inspired' to milk this cash cow after corresponding with Williams. No one even really knew that he had founded the Crips until he began to aggressively use the fact to publicize himself from prison. His Nobel Peace Prize nomination was pretty widely acknowledged to have originally been really nothing more than a publicity stunt to draw attention to the death penalty by its opponents, but then uninformed people took it and ran with it and bought into Tookie's alternate reality.
And as for that last part... if Tookie's death were to teach kids that you can't go on killing sprees, be a robber, be a drug addict, terrorize those weaker than you, and devote yourself to a gang for your whole entire life and just 'make it up' to society later without facing the punishment you KNEW you'd face if you were caught, well... I'm just not seeing where that is some big tragedy. Sorry, kids, but if you are a serial killer, and then start doing better, G.P. Girl is right, your butt is still gonna get nailed to the wall. Your actions have consequences, and being good later doesn't mean you can escape them. That is something most young people need to learn. If his death were able to teach them that, like you suggest, then I'd say he's doing us a whole hell of a lot more good dead than he ever did alive.

[senorita02]

I agree Allecto, the only thing that keeping him alive was going to teach was that you can commit murder or any other crime and then change your tune after your caught and not have to pay for it...I think the message needs to get out in this world that you and only you are held accountable for your actions, maybe if these criminals see that if you commit murder then you get the death penalty they will think twice about it... instead of thinking oh well if i decide later on that im sorry they will not punish me to the full extent, and yes i think Tookie is a lot better off for this world dead.

Im sick of hearing on the news, radio etc how he is some sort of hero and what good he was doing for society , he was a monster and thats that.