No buzzards were gliding overhead, but several helicopters circled, under black sky tinged blue. On the shore of a stunning bay at a placid moment, the state prepared to kill.
Outside the gates of San Quentin, people gathered to protest the impending execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. Hundreds became thousands as the midnight hour approached. Rage and calming prayers were in the air.
The operative God of the night was a governor. “Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption,” Arnold Schwarzenegger had declared. Hours later, a new killing would be sanitized by law and euphemism…
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