R.I.P. "Tookie" Williams

So, Stanley “Tookie” Williams has finally been executed.

Let me be the first to say: Whoo-fucking-who! It's about friggin' time!

The former Crips gang co-founder was executed yesterday shortly after midnight after receiving a lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison. The former gang member has currently been living on Death Row since 1981 when he was convicted for gunning down convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and the couple's daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned.

Up until this point, Williams has maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration claiming an unfair trial and has thereby created a national debate on the validity of Death Penalty issue. Williams was the 12th person executed in California since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Now, all of a sudden, Hollywood celebrities and capital punishment foes alike, including singer Joan Baez, actor Mike Farrell, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, actor Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in the movie "Dead Man Walking"; and former Rolling Stone love newton and hanger-on, Bianca Jagger. Isn't there not some hurricane benefit going on somewhere that they all had to train their uber-egos to crusading for convicted murderers?

In fact, over 1000 people, both supporters and opposers, gathered yesterday outside the gates of San Quentin to be part of the state's highest-profile execution in decades. Some people carried placards supporting Tookie's innocence; others just showed up for the hot cocoa. However, even his final appeal to California Gov. Schwartzenegger couldn’t save his life in the end and at 12:35 AM, he was proclaimed dead as a kipper on a cracker. Shit, you know you’re really fucked when your last chance for life rested solely on the shoulders of the Terminator, huh? Ol' Ahnowd has no problems letting people fornicate with corpses, but kill somebody in cold blood and he goes all 'Total Recall' and volunteers to flip the switch himself.

"Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?" Schwarzenegger wrote. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption." Fuckin-A, Ahnowd! I guess all those years of steroids and cheap floozzies have finally subsided from your brain.

The popular solution for those arguing that Tookie should live is that he be granted clemency and be subject to live imprisonment without the possibility of parole. What kind of logic is that? Why should hard-working taxpayers dollars be earmarked for this motherfucker’s upkeep? I realize already that the cost of the state to successfully execute someone is not significantly less that that required to house and feed convicted felons – I wouldn’t dare take that stance on this debate – but don’t you think that that money would be better served footing the electric bill as opposed to purchasing nice, soft four-ply toilet paper for him to wipe his ass with and to continually restock his collection of DVD’s in the prison’s rec room?

I’m not exactly sure why so many people were up in arms about this pending execution in the first place. We should be dancing in the streets the fucking moment the lights begin to flicker. Sure, he renounced gang life in his final years and even authored award-winning children’s books helping to undermine gang activity on the streets. During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature. So fucking what? What do the Swiss know unless it involves clocks or chocolate? There’s a reason why Hitler rolled over the Alps first. Tookie, however, has never apologized, admitted, or shown the slightest remorse for the four people he brutally murdered 24 years ago. Maybe he really was super pissed at having been shorted on his 'Big Gulp' or finding Dim Sum stains on his bed sheets...whatever, four people (and probably hundreds more), are dead as a result.

I don’t care if he’s spent the last 20 years tatting doilies at the local seniors retirement home or helping to rehabilitate orphaned baby seals…FRY HIS ASS!

I have no such qualms with the old “an eye for an eye” philosophy of judicial retribution. If I had my way, I’d have him castrated live on pay-per-view and have him fed to wild boars. At the very least, knowing California, have him locked away in a room with a loaded Colt. 45 and a non-stop Jerry Springer feed on television. Shit, why not enrich the whole experience and just auction off the task of spiking Tookie’s vein in the final minutes to the highest bidder on Ebay? It's high time that we as a society went all 'Colors' on his black ass anyways.