More on Tookie: Joe Garofoli seems eager to conjure up some sort of qualification for the fact that most California residents support the death penalty:
Pollsters regularly measure the public's opinion of the death penalty, but there is scant research on the soul-searching question that shrouds the case of Stanley Tookie Williams, the quadruple killer and gang founder who is scheduled to be executed Tuesday in San Quentin prison:
Do you believe that inmates have the capacity to reform?
Garofoli continues
. . . the cultural landscape has slowly been changing. From the Legislature's 2004 creation of a commission that is examining flaws in the capital punishment system, to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger adding the word "rehabilitation" to the title of the state Department of Corrections this year, there are signs of introspection behind the poll numbers.
I think this is called taking metaphors too seriously. Conversation, of course, is always a good thing. Call AAA if you are having trouble:
The public conversation was jump-started this fall with Oscar winner Jamie Foxx and hip-hop star Snoop Dogg touting Williams' post-incarceration redemption. Soon it will be hard for Californians to escape hard questions about the death penalty that go beyond the Williams case. California is on track to execute three people in the next two months, a sharp jump for a state that has put to death just 11 people in the past 13 years.
Gotta escape those hard questions . . .
"When there is an execution every 18 months or two years, people have been able to go back into their holes and not think about it for while," said Elisabeth Semel, a UC Berkeley law professor and director of the Death Penalty Clinic at Boalt Hall, which advocates for death row inmates.
Must get back in my hole, must not think about it, must avoid introspection and conversation . . .
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