> On the general issue of the Stanley Williams execution, I think
> it's revealing that he was constantly referred to as "Tookie". I
> really can't think of many other defendants in criminal trials who
> are routinely referred to by their nicknames ("O.J" Simpson is the
> only other one that comes to mind) and this is what confirms to me
> that the guy almost certainly didn't get a fair shake.
>
> But on the other hand, I think it's strange to analyse the
> execution in a manner that doesn't recognise that he was, in fact,
> a gangster. He was a career criminal and more importantly, a gang
> member. That doesn't mean that it's OK to execute him, but it does
> mean that if we're going to talk about what's going on, then we
> ought to recognise that there are three conflicting sets of values
> at work in this case; our own (most of us anyway) liberal morality
> under which executions are wrong because society doesn't have the
> right to kill people, the opposite view that society does have the
> right (for deterrence or retribution) to kill people, and the third
> set of ethical standards; those of the gangsters. Stanley Williams
> lived his life under a theory of the relationship between the
> individual and the state (and indeed of the moral significance of
> death) which really doesn't have many points of contact with ours.
>
> Williams, in the end, made the decision to die rather than inform
> on his former comrades (maybe he would still have been executed
> even if he had grassed, but he chose not to find out). Whatever
> else he had done in the way of rehabilitation, he was still clearly
> making decisions based on a code of ethics which is no more
> comprehensible to us on this list than that of the Homeric Greeks.
In Phil Gasper's interview with Stanley Williams, Williams said, "[F] irst and foremost, I have no information" (at <http:// mrzine.monthlyreview.org/gasper281105.html>). Williams joined the Crips in 1971, got tried and convicted in 1981, and put into solitary confinement from 1987 to 1994. In short, his gang years were a long time ago, and he spent about six and half years out of touch with the world (even the prison world), so it wouldn't be surprising if he really had no useful information that might be of interest to law enforcement.
As for Williams' code of ethic, if he felt that snitching -- or even just cooperating with authorities only to the extent of answering their questions and saying clearly and truthfully that he had no information that they seek -- was beneath him, that's a feeling that many people share across the political spectrum, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons, sometimes to good effect, sometimes to bad effect. I'll give you two examples, one bad, the other good. Take the police, for instance. You'd have a devilish time if you tried to get cops to inform against other cops about corruption, police brutality, etc. Now, take people who are summoned to HUAC hearings: e.g.,
<blockquote>When asked at his second hearing on June 5, 1953, to name others who attended the World Peace Conference, [Aaron] Copland sidestepped, referring the committee to coverage by The New York Times and an official report by the U.S. Congress. He said, "I do not personally remember having seen anyone at the conference who is not listed by those published sources." <http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/ 2005/05/03_morelockb_unamerican/></blockquote>
Copland could have just dutifully named names, whether or not he thought the government already had knowledge of them, but he thought that naming names, even if doing so neither helped nor hindered the HUAC, wasn't cool.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>