Will "Tookie" pay the ultimate penalty?

Time is running out for Tookie Williams, one of the co-founders of the Crips gang in Los Angeles. Unless Governor Schwarzenegger decides to grant clemency, Williams will be executed at 12:01 AM on Tuesday, December 13, for the murder of four people. Many Hollywood stars are making “Save Tookie” their cause du jour, and make the case that he deserves mercy because he has redeemed himself and is no longer the violent man he once was. As proof of this, they cite the many childrens’ books he has co-authored that attempt to discourage kids from joining gangs and getting in serious trouble with the law. But is Tookie Williams genuinely repentant for the murders for which he is to be executed? Despite overwhelming evidence, he has denied even committing the murders. He has shown no remorse for his crime, nor has he apologized to the victims’ families. He refuses to cooperate with police in tracking down Crips members who are suspects in criminal investigations. Yet his supporters point to his nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize and all of his books as evidence that Tookie must live. LA Police and the murder victims’ families see things quite differently.

Recently, a Virginia man, Kenneth Lee Boyd, became the 1,000th death row inmate to be executed since the Supreme Court re-instituted the death penalty in 1977. Boyd had brutally murdered his estranged wife and her father. There seems to be a certain morbid fascination on some of the media’s part with these milestones—the 1000th execution, the 2000th death in Iraq, as though the sheer numbers are evidence that these are practices that should be abolished. Indeed, the milestone execution has provoked, once again, a flurry of debate on whether capital punishment is barbaric, practiced only in dictatorships like the Congo and China, or whether it is the ultimate application of justice. “Civilized” nations like Germany and France do not have the death penalty, and the fact that America has it and uses it reinforces their stereotypes of the US and of its citizens as violent, gun-toting cowboys, led by the worst of all, Mr. Execution himself, George W. Bush.

Many years ago, when I lived in Lubbock, Texas, I was called for jury duty for a capital murder trial. A man had clubbed an 85-year-old woman to death with a baseball bat. Each potential juror (and there were about 200 in the jury pool) was interviewed by counsel for both prosecution and defense. Each side’s attorney could strike three potential jurors from the 12 (+two alternates) that would eventually hear evidence and render a verdict. When interviewed, I stated that I was a senior pastor at Shepherd of the Plains Lutheran Church. When asked about my views regarding capital punishment, I said that although I didn’t oppose its use by the state, I also believed that a person is granted a time of grace to repent of their sins, and that I personally would have a difficult time being the de facto executioner and voting to put someone to death. I became one of the prosecution’s strikes, because I could not be relied upon to vote for the death penalty.

Capital punishment is an issue about which Christians may disagree. There are certainly passages from the Old Testament that are similar to ones recorded in the Code of Hammurabi, for example, that seem to indicate that the civil law of Israel provided ample application of the death penalty for a wide variety of sins and crimes against the community and against God’s holiness. But we do not live under the Old Testament Civil Law any more than we live under its ceremonial requirements to avoid eating pork or to sacrifice animals on an altar. The New Testament does not prescribe penalties to be applied by the government; rather, it speaks to the Christian as an individual and to believers as a community. In Romans 13, Paul writes that we are to obey the governing authorities because they do not bear the sword for nothing. They are God’s agent for executing justice in the world. Certainly we are well aware of what the “sword” was used for by the Romans—for execution and for military defense. Therefore, it is undeniable that God’s Word grants to human government the power to punish with whatever force is deemed necessary, including capital punishment. If a state decides that it doesn’t want to use this ultimate punishment, then so be it. “The sword” then takes the form of life in prison.

Many people believe that, in order to be consistent, if you are pro-life in defending the unborn, then you must be anti-capital punishment. I disagree. Only a fool would equate preborn humans with the Kenneth Lee Boyds of this world. I would submit instead that capital punishment is also God’s way of expressing His views regarding the protection of human life. If “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man will his blood be shed,” then perhaps that deterrent will end up saving lives that might otherwise have become innocent victims of violent and vicious vermin like Tookie Williams.

What are your views? Have they changed as you have grown older? Should Tookie live? Express yourself in the comment section.

UPDATE Gov. Schwarzenegger refused Williams' plea for clemency, and the convicted murderer and founder of the Crips gang met the ultimate judge at 12:36 AM on Tuesday morning.