A Date with Destiny ? Stanley 'Tookie' Williams
Moss David Posner M.D.
December 11, 2005
By the time you all read this, the fate of Stanley "Tookie" Williams will have been determined, to the extent to which the Governor?s decision could alter what had been decided years ago. There is, of course, an intense barrage of emotion in the press. Almost all of this is in favor of of the commutation of the death sentence. There are those who favor execution of sentence, but those voices are few?publicly. I really can add nothing; but I?d like to make a few observations and to ask a few questions:
The opposition to the execution can be divided into two camps: those that disapprove of the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, and those that disapprove of the Death Penalty, either for ideological or pragmatic reasons. There is also a third group: those who believe that Stanley "Tookie" William's profound effect on gangs, from which he was spawned, has added an additional element to the mix, and one which is rarely if ever seen?that of the influence on large numbers of men who may have had their lives turned around from being Stanley "Tookie" William's themselves, to being Tookie?s as advertised, and concomitantly with that, the morality of executing someone who has not gone from sinner to repentant, but from sinner to saint.
There?s no reason to use this as an opportunity to discuss the morality of the Death Penalty, so let?s talk about Tookie Williams, the man, and his pending execution. Still, in so-doing, we can?t help but discuss abstract principles simply because it would have to be principles?ethics?that bears on this case, in particular:
We?you and I, at least?will probably never know for sure whether Tookie had the profound positive effects that are ascribed to him. Let?s assume for the moment that he did, in fact, have these effects on people. If so, then he has changed the lives of others to an enormous extent, and has been the recipient of the Nobel Prize nomination in Peace and Literature.
The issue, therefore, comes down, in part to the following: Can the subsequent behavior of a condemned man be so incredibly good so as to cause his court-ordered demise to be truly an immoral act.
This really is the core issue. If murder and the death penalty that follows is moral, then no action, no penitence, no profound accomplishment, no influence on humanity can matter. The reason that this is disturbing in this instance is that, in our experience, no one has really has had such accomplishments after being condemned; and we satisfy ourselves with the notion that those condemned really would not, and do not, change.
It is a sobering reminder when such a person is presented to us. But of course, those of us who remember or who read know that that is exactly what has happened before, time and time again, and nobody raised a finger to protest for the simple reason that we all were the beneficiaries, and continue to be, to this day and beyond. I am, of course, referring to Operation Paperclip.
Operation Paperclip was the covert operation of the 1950?s which brought to this country arch criminals of the Third Reich whom, there is no doubt, would have been condemned to death by the Nuremburg Court. Chief among them was Werner Von Braun, head of the Nazi rocket program and recipient of the Iron Cross from Adolph Hitler personally.
Then of course there were the other scientists who mutilated human beings in the process of experiments the results of which were used to enable our space program and which provided numerous other benefits . These among other things consisted of putting Jews into chambers where the pressure was lowered until they died, screaming, tearing out their hair. Autopsies done on these people, killed at varying degrees of negative pressure, allowed establishment of the precise levels of human endurance. Other experiments, done on captured Russians as well, consisted of putting them in vats of ice water, in the freezing cold, adding ice, until they died, howling with pain, so as to determine the precise temperatures which constitute the lower end of human endurance.
History is simple and nostalgic in retrospect, yet callous and convoluted in context. The history of which I speak was not so long ago. There are survivors of those camps who still live and still remember. There are many people who are alive today who thank Tookie Williams for literally saving their lives. They will be enraged at his death.
If we are to save these people?Tookie, Nazis, and all--then we of necessity admit that it is the utility of a human being to others that determines his fate, not his intrinsic worth as a human being. If we are to condemn them, then we must in all moral conscience not use any product the creation of which was the logical application of the principles so morbidly acquired. If we are to refuse to do this, then we are colossal hypocrites or at least opportunists and must admit that morality is defined by, and only by, the winners. These benefits would include anything and everything that will be applied to future space exploration and to air flight today in general.
All of which ultimately brings us right down to the morality of the death penalty. If we are to resolve this in any way and be able to live with our decisions?which is to say?not to be hypocrites or cynics, the only logical position that is left open to us is to condemn?the death penalty.
When I started this piece, I said that there was no point in discussing the ethics of the death penalty. Yet in discussing Tookie Williams? morality and that of the rest of us we are forced to consider this in the abstract in order to resolve it.
Gives you something to think about, doesn?t it?
The opposition to the execution can be divided into two camps: those that disapprove of the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, and those that disapprove of the Death Penalty, either for ideological or pragmatic reasons. There is also a third group: those who believe that Stanley "Tookie" William's profound effect on gangs, from which he was spawned, has added an additional element to the mix, and one which is rarely if ever seen?that of the influence on large numbers of men who may have had their lives turned around from being Stanley "Tookie" William's themselves, to being Tookie?s as advertised, and concomitantly with that, the morality of executing someone who has not gone from sinner to repentant, but from sinner to saint.
There?s no reason to use this as an opportunity to discuss the morality of the Death Penalty, so let?s talk about Tookie Williams, the man, and his pending execution. Still, in so-doing, we can?t help but discuss abstract principles simply because it would have to be principles?ethics?that bears on this case, in particular:
We?you and I, at least?will probably never know for sure whether Tookie had the profound positive effects that are ascribed to him. Let?s assume for the moment that he did, in fact, have these effects on people. If so, then he has changed the lives of others to an enormous extent, and has been the recipient of the Nobel Prize nomination in Peace and Literature.
The issue, therefore, comes down, in part to the following: Can the subsequent behavior of a condemned man be so incredibly good so as to cause his court-ordered demise to be truly an immoral act.
This really is the core issue. If murder and the death penalty that follows is moral, then no action, no penitence, no profound accomplishment, no influence on humanity can matter. The reason that this is disturbing in this instance is that, in our experience, no one has really has had such accomplishments after being condemned; and we satisfy ourselves with the notion that those condemned really would not, and do not, change.
It is a sobering reminder when such a person is presented to us. But of course, those of us who remember or who read know that that is exactly what has happened before, time and time again, and nobody raised a finger to protest for the simple reason that we all were the beneficiaries, and continue to be, to this day and beyond. I am, of course, referring to Operation Paperclip.
Operation Paperclip was the covert operation of the 1950?s which brought to this country arch criminals of the Third Reich whom, there is no doubt, would have been condemned to death by the Nuremburg Court. Chief among them was Werner Von Braun, head of the Nazi rocket program and recipient of the Iron Cross from Adolph Hitler personally.
Then of course there were the other scientists who mutilated human beings in the process of experiments the results of which were used to enable our space program and which provided numerous other benefits . These among other things consisted of putting Jews into chambers where the pressure was lowered until they died, screaming, tearing out their hair. Autopsies done on these people, killed at varying degrees of negative pressure, allowed establishment of the precise levels of human endurance. Other experiments, done on captured Russians as well, consisted of putting them in vats of ice water, in the freezing cold, adding ice, until they died, howling with pain, so as to determine the precise temperatures which constitute the lower end of human endurance.
History is simple and nostalgic in retrospect, yet callous and convoluted in context. The history of which I speak was not so long ago. There are survivors of those camps who still live and still remember. There are many people who are alive today who thank Tookie Williams for literally saving their lives. They will be enraged at his death.
If we are to save these people?Tookie, Nazis, and all--then we of necessity admit that it is the utility of a human being to others that determines his fate, not his intrinsic worth as a human being. If we are to condemn them, then we must in all moral conscience not use any product the creation of which was the logical application of the principles so morbidly acquired. If we are to refuse to do this, then we are colossal hypocrites or at least opportunists and must admit that morality is defined by, and only by, the winners. These benefits would include anything and everything that will be applied to future space exploration and to air flight today in general.
All of which ultimately brings us right down to the morality of the death penalty. If we are to resolve this in any way and be able to live with our decisions?which is to say?not to be hypocrites or cynics, the only logical position that is left open to us is to condemn?the death penalty.
When I started this piece, I said that there was no point in discussing the ethics of the death penalty. Yet in discussing Tookie Williams? morality and that of the rest of us we are forced to consider this in the abstract in order to resolve it.
Gives you something to think about, doesn?t it?
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