Good night, Tookie

I was so busy with muttering about movies today, I barely thought of the high-profile murderer who faces his end in a few hours.

I don't think my father was killed by a gang member. Evidence suggests he was a victim of a protected witness. This is someone who hides inside the federal "snitch" program, but ventures out to commit crimes when the urge strikes them. If the cops start closing in, the perpetrators holler to their handlers that they've been identified, and they get an immediate relocation and new identity.

My family is one of four who had to go through the ordeal of murder. That killer has never been captured; justice has not been done.

The execution of Tookie Williams is not a racial act; we are not hanging Negroes from the nearest pine tree in the South. If you look at the extant photographs of him, you see prison posturing. Tough guy, bodybuilder. He has steadfastly maintained his "innocence" in the face of overwhelming evidence. Prisons are filled with "innocent" people; you don't believe me, just go and ask them. He has had a quarter-century to prove his innocence. I don't see where his "good works" with young people have dissuaded a single child from joining a gang. He refuses to inform on the national organization he helped to found: The Crips gang.

I have no sympathy for murder. None whatsoever. Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, and that Chapman mook who killed John Lennon should not be alive today. They are flukes of law, and beneficiaries of nuanced arguments that I can't fathom. They are accompanied by a host of lesser-profile killers. My father's life, and the lives of three others, were traded off for a snitch's information on a burglary ring that was stealing firearms in Georgia and running them to New York.

Those who argue against the death penalty say it's barbaric. They say it somehow dehumanizes society to put people to death. They argue in nuanced, intellectual terms that there is no deterence value in killing our fellow human beings.

A killer who is executed is deterred. From what I have seen and heard of Tookie, he has nothing coming in the way of clemency or leniency. My hat is off to Governor Schwarzenegger for refusing political correctness in favor of justice. Yes, there is an element of bloodlust that associates with murder. I would never wish the ordeal on my worst enemy. My father was an old guy; 78 years old when he was gunned down. He might be dead of old age by now, but it was his right to live to the fullness of days that God awarded him. A man put himself between my father and his right to peacefully live his last days.

Tookie put himself in that same position. He stood between people and their lives, and stole their most valuable possession from them. He took everything they were, and everything they were going to be.

The money in a 7/11 cash register, the furnishings in a home, a car, and other acoutrements of life are stuff. They can be replaced. Once taken, a human life cannot be replaced.

Good night, Tookie. You bought the ticket in that instant you pulled the trigger. Now, take the ride, and be a stand-up guy about it until the last breath.