What a sad story. Stanley "Tookie" Williams is scheduled to be executed Tuesday Dec. 13 for the 1979 slayings of four people in two separate robberies. California's Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court both have rejected bids to overturn his conviction. His last hope lies with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. If clemency is granted, Williams' death sentence would be commuted to life in prison without parole. His fight for clemency is a battle between his polar opposite legacies: the co-founder of the notorious Crips gang versus the Nobel Prize-nominated children's book author who warns against the dangers of gang life. The question is: Which Tookie would be executed?

Tookie the Murderer who has brutally taken the lives of innocents, or Tookie the Penitent, who has counseled hundreds of gang members to rebuild their lives? If we could only execute one Tookie, we would execute Tookie the Murderer, but we do not have that choice. We execute them both, and thereby lies our dilemma. He has taken lives, and he has saved lives.

Perhaps a familiar Bible story can help us with this, the story of Adam and Eve