I’m not really going to go on about Tookie Williams. He was found guilty of crimes he still says he did not commit, and he may not have actually founded the Crips, as he claims.

What I found interesting was the impossible place Gov. Arnie found himself in last week when weighting clemency options.

If there is one issue I have no clear opinion on, it’s the death penalty. I don’t think it acts as an effective deterrent, but I think there are crimes that command the ultimate punishment. In other words, a member of the Crips may shoot someone regardless of if the death penalty. And while I think that few crimes should get the death penalty, someone should plug Andrea Yates into the nearest wall outlet right away.

But I’m getting away from my point. Last week pundits on both sides of the issue argued about what Gov. Arnie needed to do.

Boy was he stuck.

I tried to think about what I would do if I was in that position. If I was holding a pen in my hand, and I knew I could use that pen to stop a man from dying, I’d want to do it. Despite the crime, I’d likely sign the paper to convert the sentence to life in jail. (How perfectly liberal of me, eh?)

But then it dawned on me how disrespectful of the Justice system that would be. What gives the Governor the right to undo years of Justice system review? Years of trials, juries, appeals, Supreme Court reviews… and the Governor can just toss that aside and change the punishment. To me, that strikes as being disrespectful all the Judges and juries that heard the case.

I’m going to guess that Gov. Arnie didn’t know who Tookie Williams was until last week. Yet he held the history of the case in his hands.

What an awesome and troubling thing it must be to know you have that power, with the stroke of a pen.