Due to server problems, I couldn't post a big Tookie Williams manifesto last night. In the meanwhile, I found someone who said it better. In a nutshell, I found myself in a pox on both your houses position. On the one hand, the claims for Williams' (alternatively) innocence or conversion and atonement were spurious. Evidence of his guilt: clear. He never apologized, and in fact lionized himself in print as another Nelson Mandela. The only reason not to execute an evil man is not a spurious claim of innocence or redemption (And anyway, where was Hollywood when it came time to defend Karla Faye Tucker, the Texas killer who by all accounts experienced a real conversion, expressed deep remorse for her crime, and whose jailers attested to her change of heart? Apparently only unrepentant radicals merit star support.)
On the other hand, I was deeply ashamed of the conservative talkers I happened to catch on the subject. Sean Hannity kept a ghoulish vigil of "live coverage," and the few moments I happened to hear him, he was mocking an anti-death penalty guest who was making a perfectly reasonable point. The next morning, on the way to an appointment I happened to catch Laura Ingraham actually mocking the death. Yuck. The only decent response to a man's death --even an evil man's death, even a necessary death-- is a solemn and dignified silence. And if you're a praying person, a prayer for his soul.
The Remedy has been on the Tookie Williams case for weeks, most recently with Richard Reeb's post outlining the case for the death penalty. His respondent says exactly what I want to say. RTWT, but here's the main question: on what ground does the modern state claim the right to execute? The traditional Catholic defense of the death penalty assumed a state which rested on transcendent ground: divine law or natural law. I am one who would argue the Constitution does rest on natural law, as expressed in the formula of the Declaration: "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. . . ." But let's just say my view is not exactly reignant at present. The reigning view is expressed by Justice Kennedy in US v. Playboy, 2000:
When a student first encounters our free speech jurisprudence, he or she might think it is influenced by the philosophy that one idea is as good as any other, and that in art and literature objective standards of style, taste, decorum, beauty, and esthetics are deemed by the Constitution to be inappropriate, indeed unattainable. Quite the opposite is true. The Constitution no more enforces a relativistic philosophy or moral nihilism than it does any other point of view.
[Take a moment now to sputter at that last sentence and recall that Harriet Miers' writing was considered wanting. . .] The correspondent continues:
In other words, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of positive law which rests on no transcendent principles at all. It is indistinguishable from gang law.Obviously neither you nor I agree with Justice Kennedy, but he speaks here for the reigning legal elite. I think his view is almost uncontroverted among judges and lawyers. If that is so, then I repeat Pope John Paul's implicit question, and I am forced to answer that in this light, there really is no justification for the modern liberal state to execute anyone. I would also emphasize how clearly this brings out the connection he made between the culture of death and capital punishment, which he regarded as a manifestation of that culture. If Kennedy's positivism is correct, you can see that it provides the source of the culture of death and that killing anyone under such circumstances is simply another instance of it.Pope John Paul never made the claim that his argument was biblical or that it was part of the Church's Magisterium. His argument is prudential only, designed as a kind of "medicinal remedy" for the terrible ills of the modern liberal state. I would argue that magisterially, the Catholic tradition in support of capital punishment still holds. [Indeed, you'll find it in the Catechism, albeit under limited circumstances --ed.]
