California Conservative

Drudge, the news wires and many major papers have all been paying close attention to the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is contemplating granting clemency to Crips Gang founder “Tookie” Williams. While I don’t feel that I know enough to take a position on clemency, there is one item about the case that is constantly misrepresented.

Of the many articles about the case, the vast majority mention that Williams has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize 5 times. While that is true, I have yet to see a explanation of how the nomination process works. Once the process is understood, that claim may seem less impressive.

Here is the Nobel Prize’s own explanation of who can make a nomination:

Right to submit proposals for the Nobel Peace Prize, based on the principle of competence and universality, shall by statute be enjoyed by:

1. Members of national assemblies and governments of states;
2. Members of international courts;
3. University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;
4. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
5. Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
6. Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1) and
7. Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

By having thousands and thousands of people eligible to make nominations the Nobel Committee recieves over 1000 nominations a year.

Through this process Hitler was even nominated for not invading Austria!

While this is not a commentary on Williams case for clemency it does seem that a one sentence addition in the hundreds of articles mentioning Williams’ Nobel Peace Prize nominations would prevent clemency supporters from pointing to the nominations as a compelling reason for clemency.

After all, if all that was necessary to get politicians to commute death sentences was a Nobel Prize nomination it is safe to say that the many anti-death penalty members of academia eligible to make nominations would likely nominate other death row inmates seeking clemency.

Cross-posted at patricksemmens.com

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Arnold, California, Crime, Hollywood, Liberals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.