The Nobel Peace Prize: a high honor recognizing the contributionsof an individual or group to the betterment of the world.

Murderer:a dog who deserves to die.

These terms are poles on a spectrum that never have cause to meet– there is no middle ground on which they should ever come together,and their union could only be the result of a gross, negligent,irresponsible and disrespectful error.

An error has been made.

Stanley “Tookie” Williams has been nominated for the 2001 NobelPeace Prize.

Williams co-founded the Crips street gang — a group that hasparticipated in violent gang wars, drug trafficking, murder, rape andtheft since its beginning. He is also a convicted murderer of four –following his conviction, the degenerate and feeble appeals processhas allowed him to live for 19 years on San Quentin’s death row.

It would seem the standards for an honor as high as the NobelPeace Prize have been reduced. In considering the incompetencepresent in declaring a death row murderer a symbol of peace, thecaliber of individuals on the nominating committee isn’t what it’sbeen in the past.

There is no way to overlook who Williams is and pretend anythinghe has done since can even begin to atone for his past.

Howcan the selection committee warrant honoring him with such anomination? There is no reason to look past the murders — no oneowes Williams any favors.

According to the official Nobel Web site, peace is one of theoriginal five prize areas designated by Alfred Nobel’s will. Itstated that prizes should go to those who “shall have conferred thegreatest benefit on mankind … shall have done the most or the bestwork for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reductionof standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peacecongresses.”

Nowhere in his rap sheet does Williams even begin to fit the idealenvisioned by Nobel.

Mario Fehr, the Swiss parliament member responsible for nominatingWilliams, recognizes Williams’ Internet Project for Street Peace andhis series of children’s books — both aimed at getting kids out ofgangs and off the streets — as qualifying him for the prize.

These token gestures, the products of a guilty conscience left toponder for 19 years, return no one from the dead. The mid-life crisisof a lifelong criminal is not worth rewarding in the name of Nobel.

Fehr is naive. He is only selectively seeing the murderer for thequalities he wants to see.

“Everyone can change his life, no matter what mistakes one hasdone,” Fehr said.

Williams can change his life all he wants, but his acts ofviolence will never change because he already committed them. He isnot being punished for who he is, but for what he did.

What he did was murder four people.

Too often criminals and murderers are glorified for the progressthey have made — the level of rehabilitation they have reached. Thisthought process trivializes the reason the man is on death row — hiscrimes are made out to be an unfortunate aspect of his past, as ifhe’s some fallen protagonist.

Williams’ story is not the story of a man who went to prison forstealing bread to feed his starving family. Williams’ story is one ofmurder. He folded to the pressures of his environment.

Justice is not about rehabilitation, or making heroes out ofvillains.

A murderer is not sent to death row to rehabilitate; a murderer issent to death row to die, and until he accomplishes that, he hasaccomplished nothing.

Anything this man has done is inconsequential. He never shouldhave had the opportunity to do any of it. If the California justicesystem was not a crippled, arthritic lamb in carrying out capitalpunishment, he would have died long ago.

Williams established a Web site internationally linking troubledteens, and he wrote a few children’s books — none of which changesthe fact that Williams is a cold-blooded murderer who has yet to payfor his crimes.

The nominating committee looks to the lives he is changing throughhis efforts, stating “He’s a great man. We are happy to nominatehim.”

It may be true he is changing lives, but even if his sentence wascommuted and he was allowed to continue this work indefinitely, hewould never change a life as much as those of his victim’s families.

The change he forced on them was immediate, brutal and permanent.

Theodore Roosevelt was a great man.

Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu was a great man.

Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, was a great man.

Stanley “Tookie” Williams is not a great man.

This nomination is pissing on the legacy of this award and what itstands for.

–Jason Williams is an English and psychology senior and AssistantOpinion editor for The Daily Aztec. Send e-mail to daletter2000@hotmail.com.

–This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of TheDaily Aztec.