So Much for the Terminator

Tookie, Tookie, Tookie:

FOR ALL OF ITS QUIRKS, California is no different from other states in that policy debates unfold neatly along liberal and conservative creases. Except when it comes to the death penalty. It's the rare California issue on which a majority of Republicans and Democrats historically have agreed. A Field Poll taken in March 2004 found that 68 percent of Californians supported capital punishment. That included 87 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of Democrats. In the past 35 years support for the death penalty has not dipped below 60 percent in California. Even a half-century ago 49 percent of Californians told the Field Poll they were pro-capital punishment and only 29 percent objected to it.

That will be one set of numbers weighing on Arnold Schwarzenegger as he holds a clemency hearing Thursday for the convicted murderer Stanley "Tookie" Williams, who's scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. next Tuesday. (California is one of 14 states where the governor has sole authority to grant clemency, which in this case would reduce the death sentence life in prison without parole.)

Williams, a co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Crips gang, has become a celebrity thanks to the nine books he's written renouncing gang violence while on Death Row. Williams has been nominated nine times for a Nobel Prize nomination (four for literature; five for the peace prize). A year ago, a movie version of his life story was made--Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story--starring Jamie Foxx.

Not surprisingly, his pending execution has produced

an assortment of anti-death penalty histrionics. This week, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held "Save Tookie" press conferences and rallies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Diego. Earlier this month, Jesse Jackson and Bianca Jagger met with Williams behind bars, while rapper Snoop Dogg held a rally in front of San Quentin State Prison, where Williams is housed and California's executions are held. Other entertainers rallying for clemency include Ed Asner, Russell Crowe, Ted Danson, Richard Dreyfuss, Mike Farrell, Laurence Fishbourne, Danny Glover, Elliott Gould, and Tim Robbins. More than 30,000 people have signed a "Save Tookie" petition at his website, www.tookie.com.

This will be a test of Ahnuld's "new" direction, not to mention of his wife and liberal chief of staff's influence over him.

I predict he'll grant clemency, given how squishy he's gotten when it comes to the mirage represented in the adoration of the Left if he'll just "grow".