Just Another Death In Paradise

So, the beautiful blue winter sky of Northern California emerged again this morning, and the Bay licked at the rocks surrounding the prime piece of real estate known as San Quentin in Marin County. Just another day in paradise. Just a few hours after another state sanctioned murder, in this, the most progressive area in these great United States.

It just isn't the mark of a civilized society to put people to death to prove that killing people is wrong.
Personally, I don't care about Stanley 'Tookie' Williams' acts of redemption, his transformation from gang leading killer to anti-violence Peace Prize nominee. You either oppose this barbaric act or you don't. And you have to be willing to give those who go to the death chamber giving the finger to the relatives of their victims the same 'justice' as those who find another way within their confinement.

Murdering Stanley Williams was the most pernicious act of revenge. That's it. Do we feel better now?

Most nations who call themselves civil have long since stopped stringing 'em up, frying 'em or gassing 'em. But America keeps churning out the bodies.

Three cases shook the British out of their complacent acceptance of capital punishment. Derek Bentley, an epileptic who had the mental age of an 11 year old was hanged for a shooting committed by his younger accomplice in a robbery. Timothy Evans was convicted and killed for the murder of his wife and baby - crimes committed by another man. And in 1955, Britain hanged the last woman to be executed. Ruth Ellis shot her abusive, cheating lover in a crime that was memorialized in a pretty decent film 'Dance With A Stranger'. Today, her crimes would be seen in the context of her abuse at the hands of her lover. In 1955, she was taken to a place of execution and left dangling at the end of a noose till her legs no longer twitched and her once beautiful platinum hair fell limp.

Both Bentley and Evans have been pardoned - posthumously. That works - right?

How many more innocent men and women, most of them minorities, have to languish in American death houses waiting for their fellow citizens to be shaken by the inequity of this punishment?