12/14/2005

5 Responses to “Great Blogger Account of Tookie Williams Vigil at San Quentin”

1. This is part of the resaon that eGore and Kerry got so many votes.

   rab (c79661) — 12/15/2005 @ 3:53 am

   
   

2. I’ve turned a number of people on to zombietime’s posting for entertainment value. The problem is –as with your Scheer expose–that we have become blase about this kind of behavior because we are convinced that half of the country is incurable. No words, no pictures will ever change their minds. We see their insanity and understand that they think we are the ones who are twisted, illogical purveyors of hate and vitriol. I’m no fan of Savage but I’m starting to wonder if, indeed, it might be a mental disorder.

   pdquig (87f6cf) — 12/15/2005 @ 6:51 am

   
   

3. OMG, the Sarcasm Dude was hilarious. Almost made me wish that I had been there.

   Maggie45 (12e3a6) — 12/16/2005 @ 8:05 pm

   
   

4. Congruency ?When he denies the 4 murders !

   He is a transformed man after 6-7 years in close to solitary confinement. He denies committing the 4 murders. He had been found guilty and his conviction was upheld through 24 years appellate process.

   If he did commit the 4 murders, why does a transformed man helping youths from gang life, lie about committing the 4 murders?

   What permutations are consistent with a transformed men bent on helping others?

   There are three possible ways he can be congruent when he denies committing the 4 murders.

   • 1) He was telling the truth & he is thus congruent.

   • 2) He was telling a lie, what he thinks is a white lie , to further the cause of helping the opponents of death penalty. Opponents contend that there have been 120 wrongful convictions of persons on death row. So his “innocence” casts a doubt and draws attention to the 120 wrong convictions and makes the case for abolishing death penalty. He is telling a lie and yet he is also congruent because he perceives he does it for the greater good of those who would otherwise be executed wrongfully.

   • 3) He did not know he is telling a lie as there is some mental or emotional health problem that has “blacked out” that part of his memory of the 4 murders and replaced it with a memory he did not commit the 4 murders. He is still congruent.

   If it is (1) it is part of the reason why some caution to abolish death penalty as there have been 120 cases wrongfully convicted.

   If it is (2) it is part of the strategy to further the abolishment of death penalty through wrong means, deceitful means. It in fact tarnishes the cause of abolishing death penalty and makes fools of those who associated with him to further the cause, using him as their poster child. It would have been better for him to admit the 4 murders and say he is a transformed man and is now helping youths off the street to the extent he can.

   If it is (3) could there be psychiatric psychological tests that could have flush that out?

   My view is that it is more likely than not, scene (2) where he is telling a lie based on his perception that he is doing it for the greater good of helping others from death penalty. It explains why he a transformed man can ‘congruently’ tell this lie and feel congruent still. How different would this be , from someone asking “Is there any Jew in your basement?” and you answer “No” when in fact you have two hidden away in your basement [ during Hitler’s time of …]

   For (2) to work, he must not have told Jesse Jackson and Barbara Becnel and those who lauded him for his good work.

   (2) works on the basis those who listen carefully will ponder why he denied committing the 4 murders. Is it he did not do it? Why would he lie after his gradual conversion and transformation? Maybe he did not lie …. May be he is innocent as 120 wrongly convicted persons on death row are innocent. Maybe it is better to repeal the death penalty. Maybe as start we should work towards getting a moratorium on death penalty executions until more research is done and investigation completed on whether death penalty should be retained or abolished.

   Dan Markel: Overall, over 120 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1976–even after being convicted “beyond a reasonable doubt” under the extra procedures the Supreme Court has insisted upon for capital cases. A proper concern with accurately sorting the innocent from the guilty requires the state to punish with sobriety, restraint, and also modesty. When other means are available to advance the goals of expressing social condemnation for the apparent perpetrator’s acts, and protecting society from a person found to be dangerous to its members, the state should refuse to impose a punishment that prevents it from later acknowledging–and making amends for–its own wrongful acts to its own unintended victims. In sum, it’s becoming clear that if executions persist, so will mistaken executions. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20051209_markel.html

   Yi Ling (83d5cb) — 12/16/2005 @ 10:37 pm

   
   

5. Continuing/= Becnel production

   When did Tookie go into solitary confinement and when did he first meet Barbara Becnel?

   He went into solitary confinement for bad violent behaviour for 6 1/2 years from 1988 to 1994. He met Becnel in 1993. His violent behavior stopped after meeting her, otherwise he was averaging about 1 violent episode every 1-2 years.

   1 in 1981, 2 in 1982, 2 in 1984, 1 in 1986, 1 in 1988, and 1 in 1991 and last one in 1993.

   His violent behavior did not end when he was in solitary confinement from 1988-1994 as he was still acting violently in 1991 and 1993.

   It thus appears that his violent behavior ended with his encounter and bonding with Becnel. She seems to be driving the whole thing. …

   During a jailhouse visit in 1993 to research a book on gangs, writer Barbara Becnel discovered that Williams, who is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13, had renounced his gang past. Over the next two years, Becnel shed her doubts about the co-founder of the Crips and helped him work to persuade youths to avoid gangs.

   Williams taped a message from prison in April 1993 that was broadcast to Los Angeles gang members at a “peace summit.” With the help of Barbara Becnel, a writer he met in prison who became his champion, he started work on eight books for children that were published in 1996 as a series called, “Tookie Speaks Out Against Gang Violence.”

   He followed with “Life in Prison” in 1998 and a memoir, “Blue Rage, Black Redemption,” in 2004 and was working on two more books before his execution. He spoke regularly from prison to youths and educators, and posted a model “peace protocol” for gangs, which supporters say was widely used, on his Web site in 2000. “Redemption,” a television movie starting Jamie Foxx in a sympathetic portrayal of Williams, aired in 2004.

   Around the same time, Becnel met a woman who was active in anti-violence efforts in Zurich, Switzerland, and took Williams’ campaign to Europe. Zurich, like many California cities, was troubled by gangs, with Somali and other immigrant youths engaged in violence, Becnel said.

   She made several trips to Zurich and eventually met the Swiss national legislator Mario Fehr, who would nominate Williams for the Nobel in 2001. Legislators and professors in certain disciplines can nominate Nobel Prize candidates. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_112905S.shtml

   It appears she has taken it too personally, and thus lost here objectivity, as she is said to have said ….

   Williams’ spokeswoman and co-author, Barbara Becnel, has said she is “now on a mission.” [45] “That mission is one: to obtain justice for Stanley Tookie Williams by proving beyond a shadow of a doubt his innocence, (and) continuing to preserve the incredibly remarkable legacy of this man who personifies redemption.” She will also work to defeat Governor Schwarzenegger, who refused clemency, in the next election.

   When one is too attached to the work done, for the Black youths as she appears to be doing …

   Currently the executive director of a nonprofit group in Richmond, Calif., in the Bay Area, Becnel, 55, ..

   one loses objectivity and uses questionable means to achieve one’s objective.

   Tookie is a smart man and given a dictionary in 1985 he began building his vocabulary.

   Then, in 1985, a chaplain gave him a dictionary. “I began falling in love with words,” he says. “I would write down 50 words on one side of a paper towel, then put the definitions on the other side and test myself.” He says he began reading too: black history and philosophy and world religion. Williams says that he never had an epiphany that compelled him to change his life. As he describes it, he developed a conscience gradually, through educating himself.

   The period of confinement 1988-1994 when he began reading led others to observe him as a well read person after the confinement.

   Once trust had been established, Becnel went to San Quentin to size up her infamous correspondent. “But he wasn’t what I thought he would be,” she said. “I thought he’d be someone that knew and used street jargon. I didn’t expect him to be so learned, so well-read. This was a very smart guy. I knew I’d met a leader.”

   This is no different from how he attacked his body build issue at 19.

   Back then Williams was one of the smallest kids in the neighborhood. But he knew that in a place like South Central, the more threatening you looked, the less threatened you felt. At 19, Williams began weight lifting. A lot. After about a year, he was bench-pressing 600 pounds and eating for two people. ”I was monstrous,” he says.

   So he can be smart enough to know strategically, that creating a doubt as to his guilt, over his denial, could further the abolishing the death penalty cause. He can be smart enough to eschew violent behavior after meeting Becnel to enable him to divert and focus his energy on more meaningful work as above mentioned from the period of 1993-2005.

   It is people’s attachment to the work he was doing, that makes them lose objectivity to who he is and the sentence that needs to be carried out, issues of good work aside.

   Some people need to let go and recognise that there is a time and place for Tookie to help out and there is a season for him to be executed.

   Yi Ling (12e3c6) — 12/17/2005 @ 7:43 am