Tookie Williams does not say the right thing to the governor

Governor Schwarzenegger said that he refused to grant Tookie Williams clemency because Williams never apologized for the murders he committed. Tookie Williams has maintained, all these years, that he did not commit them. If he did commit them, then he placed his pride above his own life, which was his choice--assuming it would really have made any difference to Schwarzenegger. If he did not commit them, then he placed the truth over his own life.

I am reminded of 14-year-old Caril Ann Fugate, who, along with Charles Starkweather, was tried as an adult, and who maintained throughout her trial and imprisonment that she was Starkweather's hostage. What does not appear in the now-brief accounts of Fugate's life is that she could have had parole much earlier if she had apologized for her crimes, but she just kept on insisting she had committed no crimes and had been a hostage. She spent eighteen years in prison.

By the way, as of this writing, Arnold Schwarzenegger has not apologized for committing multiple sexual assaults, but those types of crimes do not concern the people of America.