I am glad you saw the legal side of things, that is a noble profession, but I think you might be missing out on a couple things. 1. How many of those people from the IP got off due to actually not being guilty as opposed to good attorneys finding loopholes in the case and getting them off? 2. What GOOD did Tookie Williams actually do? He wrote a couple childrens books that sold < 1000 copies from what I understand.

From an article posted at: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...DG5TG04SF1.DTL
Continue to read on there, is alot more to this guys past than what people are choosing to believe. This to me doesn't sound like someone who should win the peace prize, especially since he has harmed people in prison. Reformed, my ass.

No, it's just as bad if he killed them in a clean way.. it's just that when I hear people saying someone got shot I don't really think much about it and I'm desensitized to it because I hear it so often on the news and it sounds "clean" already because I've never seen the actual up close pics so I don't realize how "dirty" or graphic it really is.

I haven't seen any other pics of people shot at close-range (and I really don't want to either) so I didn't realize that it would look THAT bad, I just assumed that those pics I posted were worst, because I can't imagine anything really worse than that already.

It just looks really bad. Now I'm all phobic and paranoid about dying violently... Plus the way they described it on the site, on one of the victims they said the bullet penetrated his spleen, kidney, bowels, large vessels...

I mean i know it's bad when someone gets shot but i never really thought of the specifics like all the body parts it would/could penetrate and damage. It just sounds really painful and its gruesome looking, I think I'm kind of traumatized now :(

Post conviction relief is alot more difficult than you would imagine. Layman always seem to believe that the system is riddled with loopholes that allow people to get off. Then when its their brother or son or husband facing conviction, they are furious that a loophole is not available. It's all a matter of perspective, I guess.

The Innocence Project is not what you think. ALL of the 164 exonerations were cases were DNA evidence proved conclusively that there was an innocent man behind bars. Read up on this group, they are worth ten minutes of your time to see some good in the world. www.innocenceproject.org

well he is dead from what i heard on the radio this morning

You know it is not really that hard not to murder people. Poor, black, asian, white, rich otherwise murderers are a minority for a reason. His deeds as a crip will be celebrated by those who live that lifestyle, his last few years will be spit on for living contrary to gang mentality and being a sell out. His books may have saved some kids from simular lifestyles and that is a good thing but irrelivent, this crap that people have about how all good deeds are rewarded is a weakness that leads many people to lives of deprevity and patheticness. You do not get a cookie in the big boy world for doing shit you are supposed to do, you do them and your reward is knowing you did it and a better quality of life.

I seriously doubt there will be organized riots over this. This situation is drastically differant than any other example that "caused" them in the past. This is about a man who did bad things, he may or may not have done the ones he will be put to death on (of course you either shot someone with a shotgun or you did not, not exactly impossible to prove or not), but he has done other bad things that were reprehensable and because of that the majority of people will not feel outrage on this matter, and without that outrage there is no common feeling for a need to lash out. Simply not enough people to "gang" up, no pun intended. There is no magical synapsis between blacks, do not let the movies of the 70's fool you, all that soul brother shit died out a long time ago. Rioting in an area because a bunch of cops get off on a charge of beating the shit out of someone is far differant than a person who was bad paying for it even though he is "good" now. Not saying it was right but they rioted because they were revolting against a system that they felt was no longer in their minds working for them but against them and only by violence could they fight against it. did it work? that is arguable, just because we do not hear of more beatings does not mean they do not happen, there was a beating by a cop in New Orleans post Katrina but how many cops now think a little harder before they act because of the riots in LA?

There is no better way to get a point out than to die for it, his books were a good thing, now he will martyr them, in death he will now have a legacy, his name has a better chance of living on and so does his message. His death without the books would still be a good lesson honestly, him getting off would send a message that if you clean up nice you can get off, alrady you have people not worrying about the concequences of their actions, this would not help that at all. Every gangsta knows the rules, you live and die by the street life, the major problem he had when he was convited was that his death will come without the glory of being mowed down in the streets, they think of themselves as urban soldiers as warriors, what soldier wants to die outside of battle with no honor? Everyday he lived he knew there was a chance he could die, but he always expected to go out hard, jail time gave him a chance to realize that was as stupid as the rest of us see it, he does not get off because of his enlightenment to this fact

As far as we americans and the way we live and human rights, Tookie had all the rights of any other american man born here. He had all the chances that his parents worked for, the same can be said of any man here. Their inequities put him in a bad situation, his choices kept him there! He had the ability same as any of us to make something of his life, he may have had a harder time of it because of his surroundings but none the less he had the chance and he made a choice that the majority of the people IN his surroundings did not make. Human rights means nothing more than that, you are born here, the government will not make you do anything but co-exist with those around you peacefully through a series of laws and concequences for those laws since God is not going to enforce his laws imemdiately. There is a bar set and all people who live their lives within the laws and system of this country will all have the same laws and confines. It DOES NOT mean when you break the law you are not punished, it means that you will not "suffer". When you violate this you pay here, when you violate it anywhere else, you pay there also. You take life here, in some places you die, you take life in many other places you also die, shit you die for less in some countries. There is no trick, there is no game, the laws have been set for a while, the concequences have been known just as long, if you do not like the laws of the land, change them through democratic means, or shut the hell up and live by them. what the hell is the argument here?

The laws are set for our issues, and our issues are influinced by our laws. Our freedoms give we americans more rope to hang ourselves with, that is the major differance between our societies. Our government tends to let us make more decisions that can be potentially bad because they do not limit the reagents, that is the "down" side of the democracy that you are misunderstanding. We have many powers and with those we have many responsibilities, Tookie dropped the ball, here the concequences for fumble is death, case closed. States that have a propensity for higher violent crimes tend to allow the death penalty, those with less tend not to. Each state and each area in the state has its own ability to set laws and standards, this is done on a per capita basis and also change based upon the life and lifestyle of that area, what is wrong with that? Is everything in your closet one size fits all, HELL NO, tailor made clothing FITS THE BEST now don't it, if it is like that in something as simple as clothing why do you think a far more complex sytem does not have the same needs?

I'm done here, flame on