In putting Stanley Tookie Williams to death for the alleged shotgun killings of four people, society could be considered to have erred.

Firstly there is the question of whether Williams was guilty of the crimes. The prosecuting attorney in his case, Robert Martin, was accused at the time of having kept three African-Americans off the jury. Martin was later censured by the California State Supreme Court for using race as a criterion in jury selection; two of his murder convictions were overturned on those grounds. Williams was never granted a retrial.

Then there is the question of whether the sanest imaginable reaction to gun violence is putting a man suspected of committing it to death on a cross-shaped gurney. Mightn’t a nationwide campaign to eliminate guns within thirty years be more in keeping with civilization?

Williams’ case is particularly perplexing because the evidence of his life both inside and outside prison up until the 1990’s indicates that he was an inhuman monster. But in his subsequent, so-called “redemption,” he not only was nominated for four Nobel Prizes for his children’s books denouncing gangs and violence, he also continued to refuse to provide law enforcement officials with information that would have helped them to actually diminish gang violence, which continues.

Nonetheless, one does have to marvel at the hypocrisy of society. Williams had been convicted of killing four people; looking over the evidence of the case, indications are that he was guilty of the crime, but not beyond a reasonable doubt. For example, a sheriff’s deputy testified at the trial that the shotgun shell recovered from one of the murder scenes matched test shells from Stanley Williams’ shotgun, but no second examiner verified his findings, and the Defense questioned that sheriff’s deputy’s methodology.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush estimates that his invasion of Iraq took the lives of 30,000 Iraqis and acknowledges that it is racing towards having taken 1,200 American lives. He has shown no remorse, and indeed declared that if he had the invasion to do over again, he would do it. Unlike Stanley Tookie Williams, who had renounced violence and gang behavior, Bush continues to advocate it. Williams’ gang was called The Crips; Bush’s is called The Army.