Life Goes On ... Even as a Life Ends

Even on the first full day after a midnight execution, the sun shines bright in Southern California. In other words, no overt sign from God that he frowns on the state of California lethally injecting a convicted murderer who claimed innocence and redemption. No punishing rains, no earthquake. Not even that many clouds.

To the extent that we humans object to executions, we keep our own counsel. By any observable measure, life went on for us on the day that the state took it away from Stanley Tookie Williams.

The exceptions to that seeming indifference lie within our own consciences. At the Episcopal Church of the Messiah, just a few blocks from Orange County’s halls of justice, the regular Tuesday morning staff meeting included a discussion of the execution that occurred several hours earlier. The staff had a Bible study and prayed for the world and the church.

Bradford Karelius, the rector, says capital punishment shouldn’t be the way for Christians, although he knows many support it. I ask him whether he laments for Williams or society.

“The lament is for a society that, as sophisticated as we are about the gift of life, still has this Wild West mentality about execution,” he says.

He says he feels a “heaviness” lingering over him, because of the execution. In keeping with that, he’s speaking softly, without anger. “One of the images that comes to me,” he says, “is the sense that God’s work is never done and our opportunity for penance and renewal doesn’t end when death comes. God does not give up on us. In a way, an execution is us giving up on us.”

A couple blocks away, 48-year-old A.J. is waiting at a bus stop. He doesn’t want to give his last name, but he has thoughts about Williams’ execution. “I’m glad the governor gave it to him,” he says, straightforwardly. No glee, no menace. Just answering the question.

“He didn’t say he was sorry or nothing,” A.J. says.

So, no clemency at all? “If he showed some atonement, yeah,” A.J. says. “And if he would have asked the families of the people he killed for forgiveness, too. But he didn’t. He didn’t want to admit to it.”

I wonder if A.J.’s pliability on the subject is representative of society. In one breath, he’s more than willing to execute. But in the next, he says true repentance would go a long way in him accepting clemency. “If it was up to me,” he says, “I’d say it’s up to the families. If the families say they forgave him, I might have given him clemency.”

I ask if it bothers him that the state killed a man. “It doesn’t bother me,” he says. “I’m glad it’s over with. I had a friend who kept bugging me about it. I told him I really didn’t care about it.”

Several blocks down the street, Leah Smith is doing what she and her husband do most mornings -- help homeless people keep their heads above water. They operate the Catholic Worker group home in Santa Ana, a job that also has a large prison ministry aspect to it.

Smith has joined anti-capital punishment vigils in the past but couldn’t make it to the one for Williams. The state’s willingness to execute, she says, is but a manifestation of society’s devaluation of life.

“There’s always this diminishment of the human person,” she says. “I wonder if part of why we aren’t more shocked by the reality of what happens when we choose as a community to kill somebody isn’t because we devalue life in so many different ways.”

Smith notes that she’s been talking to a woman considering an abortion, just as the state was moving to end Williams’ life. Totally different situations, Smith says, but both involving a moment in time that takes a life.

As of Tuesday morning, the pregnant woman hadn’t decided what to do, but Smith said she asked the woman to contemplate who the person might become if allowed to live.

“If I believe, as I do, that it would be wrong to kill Tookie Williams,” Smith says, “in the same way I’d say the same thing to her, and did.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.