Will Terminator Cave In To His Hollywood Buddies?

Today is the big hearing that will supposedly help California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger decide whether or not to grant clemency to a vicious murderer on death row for the last 25 years. Practically every appellate court available (including the ultra-liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) has denied Tookie Williams’ appeal so he is scheduled to die by lethal injection on December 13 for the gory murders of four innocent people.

We already reported how many Hollywood entertainers, led by actor Danny Glover, have rallied to spare this gang banger/murderer, but now the NAACP has jumped on the bandwagon, launching a “Save Tookie” crusade in various big cities. Not surprisingly, the NAACP’s new president has made it a race issue.

This is a weak and desperate argument and many prominent black leaders and journalists have criticized the so-called civil rights organization. In a commentary on Pacific News Service, well-known black columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes that some of the loudest voices calling for the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams come from black communities.

The president of a well-known California nonprofit, Community Advocate, a group that strives to improve race relations as well as human and civil rights, said that there are lots of issues conflicting black people all over the country and for the NAACP’s new president to make this his first official act at the helm is depressing.

Let’s hope that Arnold, in true Terminator fashion, isn’t swayed by all the rhetoric and doesn’t take after former Illinois Governor George Ryan who granted clemency to all 167 death-row inmates before leaving office.

In the meantime, you can vote whether Tookie should once and for all get the punishment he deserves in a poll being conducted by the California Conservative. So far 62% are in favor of death and 38% against.