Pope Ahnold?

I don't pretend to know for certain what the exact criteria should be for a governor contemplating clemency to save the life of a man facing the death penalty, but in refusing to grant this reprieve to Stanley Tookie Williams, Governor Schwarzenegger used language I would have thought more appropriate for the man's confessor.

The sticking point was Williams' insistence that he was not guilty of the murders he had been convicted of committing. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, " Ahnold wrote, " there can be no redemption. In this case the one thing that would be the clearest indication of complete remorse and full redemption is the one thing Williams will not do."

Atonement? It could be argued that Williams did that with his life in prison. He obviously had remorse for the life he'd led. But he kept insisting he was innocent, infuriating the police and prosecutors. But what baits my hook is all the repeated use of the word redemption.

I thought the governor was being asked to commute a death sentence to life in prison. What does that have to do with redemption? Don't Christians believe that's God's role? Even the Catholics delegate the forgiveness of sin to ordained priests, not politicians. And even they aren't normally presumptuous enough to state who does and doesn't get redeemed.

Ahnold is taking his Terminator role a little too seriously. Hey, Caesar. Stick to the state. Or are you looking for higher office where they don't require American citizenship?

The intense lobbying to kill convicted murderers, whatever the evidence, on the part of police, FBI (when they're involved) and prosecutors, can perhaps be better understood by the headline of a story that appeared the same day as Ahnold's statement in the San Francisco Chronicle: No arrests made in 80% of homicides. That's just San Francisco, but the figures are probably nearly as shocking elsewhere. When they actually arrest someone and successfully make a case, they sure need it to stick. And somebody has to die.