IN DECIDING WHETHER Stanley Tookie Williams should die Dec. 13 for murdering four people, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's unenviable task is to play God. The question he must answer is whether Williams' reformation during the last 16 years is sufficient to let him live out his life in prison.
The "old Tookie," circa 1979, shot 7-Eleven employee Albert Owens in the back of the head, execution-style, during a robbery. Two weeks later, he murdered three members of the Yang family while robbing their motel business.
Then there is the "new Tookie," circa 1989 to the present. Returning to death row after more than six years of solitary confinement, Williams wrote children's books advocating nonviolence and alternatives to gangs, and an autobiography. In 2004, he helped broker a peace agreement, known as the Tookie Protocol for Peace, to end one of the deadliest gang wars in the country. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize multiple times.
The law is silent on which Williams the governor should judge, though the long appellate process has morphed a murderer into a peacemaker. But Schwarzenegger can look to the law to make a decision.
The governor has twice considered -- and twice denied -- clemency for death row inmates. The Williams case is complicated because his accomplishments are dramatic and their effects measurable.
Jonathan Harris, a lawyer working for Williams, asks: If he is not granted clemency based on his personal redemption and the thousands of people he has positively touched, who would you give it to?
Although affirming Williams' conviction and death sentence, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took the unprecedented step of urging the governor to seriously consider a clemency petition from Williams.
The state's district attorneys, victims rights groups, sheriffs and police chiefs demand that Williams be executed for what a jury said he did: the murder of four people, for which the jury set the penalty as death, not life without parole.
Schwarzenegger should reweigh the penalty-phase evidence based on what is known about Williams now, as opposed to then.
A death penalty case is divided into the guilt phase and the penalty phase. In finding Williams guilty of four murders, a jury determined that he would receive either a sentence of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
