A man to respect

I would not have bet a nickel on it, but solemn kudos to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who denied clemency for convicted murderer Stanley Williams. (via His Virtualness)

"After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency. The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this case."

How easy it would have been to appeal to Manhattan media bias and the like. This is the most sacred duty a governor, and a government carries out, and they do it in the name of the dead.

That the governor did this with all the celebrity support of Williams is all the more important. There is no doubt that the death penalty is arbitrary -- California, pathetically, has executed 12 people since 1977, a disgusting record by its paucity -- but if clemency can become a function of popular appeal, then the death penalty becomes a thing of evil.

By standing up to this, the governor upheld the very idea of law. It's unlikely any elected official will perform a more important duty this year anywhere.

LAGuy Interrupts: I'm not going to get into whether or not the Guv did the right thing. I just want to note that the political courage it took to not stop the execution was zero. We now return you to ColumbusGuy.

Columbus Guy shoves it in anyway: You can tell by his concept of zero that LAGuy was neither an engineer nor a mathematician. Anyway, he can tell it to George Ryan.

Related note: NPR Morning Edition today had a story on this exploring the theme of redemption. Showing incredible irresponsibility and incompetence, the reporter noted that in the 1950's the death penalty clemency rate was on the order of 20 percent, whereas today it is negligible.

Now, first of all, the basic fact of today's rate is grossly wrong, because Illinois' corrupt former governor commuted that state's entire death row before he left office. That skews the numbers incredibly toward clemency, probably so far as to an absolute majority as compared to actual executions, but in any case something far above negligible.

But secondly, the reporter did not mention what the gross (or per capita) rate of executions was in the 1950's. Guaranteed, it was more than 12 per nearly 30 years.

If you are executing a significant percentage of convicted murderers -- 5 percent? 3 percent? 15 percent? -- then granting clemency to 20 percent of them makes sense. When you execute a negligible percent of them, far less than 1 percent, then clemency becomes an entirely different thing, and ought be granted only in the most extreme of circumstances. Of course, if your line of thought cannot proceed beyond, "Death pentalty, bad," then your mind will never be able to consider such context.

Condolences to Stanley Williams, who may well be a better man today than he was more than 20 years ago, to his family and his supporters, and condolences too to the families and supporters of his victims.