California--neh, Californians killed a man today. He may have been a reprehensible, immoral pig of a man, but a man none the less. I abhor the death penalty, but I fault my side for missing a golden opportunity. Rather than harping on this forever, I will end my commentary with Steve Lopez's observations found in todays Los Angeles Times.

"I watched a man die today"
By Steve Lopez, Times Staff Writer

December 13, 2005

SAN QUENTIN — It's just past midnight, and another Crip is on his way to the graveyard.

Stanley Tookie Williams, who shotgunned four people to death a quarter of a century ago and couldn't sell the story of his redemption to anyone who mattered, took a lethal shot in the arm and closed his eyes for good.

I watched him die from 12 feet away. The execution team struggled to tap a vein, and Williams raised his head as if to question their competence. He also looked at supporters and exchanged final words with them before the drugs kicked in and he was gone.

Nothing I saw made me feel any differently about Williams, the Crip co-founder whose legacy is terrorized neighborhoods and a chorus of weeping mothers.

His anti-violence books and speeches were too little, too late, and the mythologizing of him was as unconvincing as the Nobel nominations.

But his execution was a macabre spectacle in a nation that preaches godly virtue to the world while resisting a global march away from the Medieval practice of capital punishment.

I would have had no problem leaving Williams locked up with his regrets and haunted by his deeds for the rest of his natural life.

I watched a man die today, killed by the state of California with institutional resolve, and wondered what we gained.