Corpses can’t do much good

Tookie Williams is dead. He can’t do much good as a corpse ? except, perhaps to provide yet another example of why the death penalty should be abolished. At the very least, California legislators should consider carefully Williams’ execution when they take up a moratorium on capital punishment early next year.

As a living, breathing human being, Williams was able to serve as the role model of The Person You Don’t Want To Become. His series of kids’ books about prison life and his admonitions against joining gangs have been used in schools around the country.

“The students are learning much from Tookie’s mistakes and are pledging to not follow in his footsteps,” a teacher reported in his book review. “Tookie describes the mentality that makes a gang attractive,” added a therapist who works with high-risk youth, “and how he has learned to overcome the seduction of aggressive power.”

If even a few kids who would have otherwise been seduced opt out of gang life because of what they’ve learned from Tookie Williams, his life behind bars will have been worthwhile. His death, on the other hand, sends a very different message: revenge outweighs redemption.

Longtime anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean compared Williams’ execution to gang violence, where the law of an eye for an eye rules. “Don’t tell us you’re helping kids now,” she characterized gang members as saying, “Did you do the crime? Then we’ve gotta kill you.”

Supporters of the death penalty insist that Williams’ behavior in prison should have had no bearing on whether to grant him clemency. Project 21, an organization describing itself as a network of conservative African-Americans, issued a press release arguing that repentance “does not release Tookie Williams from the consequences of his actions.”

We agree. Williams has been convicted of committing horrible crimes ? of killing four people in cold blood, and of helping create the murderous, drug-dealing gang “the Crips.” Williams should have been locked up for life. But that’s not true for every criminal. For prisoners who have some prospect of release, what do they learn when they hear that repentance is irrelevant? It can’t inspire them to turn their lives around in jail.

Still, it’s the people outside of jail capital punishment advocates hope to influence, especially gang members like Tookie Williams once was. Referring to the celebrities pleading for Williams’ life, the president of a group called Throw Away the Key warned, “Let the next gangbanger note: even Snoop Dogg could not save this killer from the justice imposed by a multi-racial jury.”

The question of whether the death sentence reduces violent crime has been hotly debated for decades, but Americans are increasingly skeptical of any deterrent effect. Twenty years ago, according to Gallup polls, 62 percent said yes when asked if the death penalty “acts as a deterrent,” or “lowers the murder rate.” In a survey this year that number dropped 20 points ? 42 percent answered yes, 56 percent no.

And while support for capital punishment is still healthy ? about two-thirds endorse it in most polls ? it has dropped from 80 percent 10 years ago. It’s our guess that a couple of factors contribute to that decline: the lowering crime rates make people feel less vulnerable.

Given the possibility of fatal error in administering capital punishment, more Americans are opting for the alternative of sentencing a murderer to life without parole. When polls give a choice, half the public opts for death, half for life.

It’s not coddling criminals to punish them to live out their days behind prison walls without any hope of freedom. But it does provide the possibility of redemption, and the ability, as Tookie Williams showed, to do some good. That’s something hard for a dead person to do.

Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].