I started to spend a few minutes jumping up and down and screaming about this whole Tookie Williams issue. I was going to point out that we live in a country that condones the organized death of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, refuses to smack down religious zealots that call for the assassination of heroic world leaders and now executes Nobel Peace Prize Nominees.

I was going to call George Bush and The Governator nasty names. I was going to use bad words. But, instead of doing that I'm just going to make my point about the Tookie Williams case using his own words... words far better chosen and far more intelligent than anything that I was going to slap up here. So, I'll shut up and let him do the talking:

LIVE FROM DEATH ROW

March 24, 2001

Greetings to All of You,

It’s an honor being able to speak to all of you conscientious people here today. My name is Stanley “Tookie” Williams. I’m a condemned prisoner on San Quentin’s death row and for more than 19 ½ years of existing within this microcosm of madness, it has been a race against the executioner’s clock to prove my innocence, to regain my freedom. Plain and simple, if I fail, I die.

In the meantime, death row remains a constant reminder of my morality. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this hellhole looks, feels, and smells like doom. Personally, I’ve known nine black men who have lost their lives here on death row. Two committed suicide by hanging, three died of illnesses, one was shot to death, one died of asphyxiation caused by pepper spray, one was executed here at San Quentin and the ninth man was transferred from San Quentin’s death row to a Missouri State death row and promptly executed. What is more, there are other men here on San Quentin’s death row who were killed, committed suicide, died of illnesses of were executed.

Also, keeping in the evil spirit of capital punishment there are some men who are exercising their constitutional rights in the court of appeals to expedite their demise. Notably, when the death penalty is analyzed and put into proper perspective, it’s a theoretical and political error for vengeance posing as justice.

I see no greater hypocrisy than a system that propagates murder for the solution to murder. To say the least, this mechanism of death operates on vengeance, blatant racism, prosecutorial misconduct, questionable “experts” IAC- am acronym for “ineffective Assistance of Counsel”, tainted evidence, involuntary drugging, exclusion of black jurors and a host of other miscarriages of justice.

Despite the duplicitous revelations, the blindness of revenge influences some people to support capital punishment and its barbaric method of lextalionus- an eye for an eye.

To an objective mind, this system of termination is the poor people’s death chamber. It’s also pro-death penalty platform for political demagogues, unsatisfied vigilantes, media spin-doctors and other groups who try to obtain solace through the legalized murder of another.

It evokes images of atrocious history of the 17th, 18th, and 19 the centuries when vengeful seeking mobs had salivated over watching people lynched- and particularly, black men and women.

Nevertheless, when murder has been committed by either a criminal without a without a conscious or in the name of citizens with a conscious who support or enforce a legal system that murders, the result is still the same: death.

I must ask this audience, what are the moral lessons to be learned in this merciless strategy that kills poor people? It’s no mystery as to why children are emulating “The Terminator” and going to school kamakazi-like throughout this country. We adults tend to forget that they have vicariously brought to the rhetoric that killing is the elixir for their personal problems. This “choplogic” for the death penalty has provided the ultimate poetic license for children- consciously or subconsciously- to emulate this society’s philosophy of death for death. Many of these children are murdering in hopes of hopes of being murdered themselves.

To murder and to be murdered has become the Zeitgeist- the spirit of the era- for youth martyrdom.

I’m hoping that all of you will concur that this cycle of madness must end, beginning with abolishing the death penalty. But realistically, a moratorium in California must first be implemented.

Such a moral gesture for humanity will help establish a legal forum for an independent panel to thoroughly delve into every aspect of the death penalty system to counter the biased “harmless error” rulings, to check for improprieties on behalf of arresting officers, DAs (District Attorneys), judges, investigators, forensic experts and others who are paid to uphold its (the death penalty system’s) decree.

I am confident enough to say to all of you today that if the death penalty is objectively investigated, it will be exposed for what it is- a racist, inhumane and disproportionately allocated system used primarily for poor people. I don’t know about any of you, but personally, I can’t name one millionaire or billionaire on death row. Can you?

In conclusion, I am fully aware that when I help underprivileged children and speak out against the death penalty, I do so from a vulnerable position. My voice can be silenced by institutional bureaucracy or treachery, but the message transcends my life and it is God’s will.

Meanwhile, while I breathe, I hope.

–

Nobel Peace Prize nominee,

children's book author and

San Quentin death row inmate