To the Editors of the Fresno Bee,

As an English professor in the California community college system, I teach students how to present arguments without resorting to logical fallacies. Your November 23 editorial, "A lethal life," which calls for the execution of Nobel Prize Nominee and Presidential Call to Service Award winner Stanley Tookie Williams, indicates that you need to be schooled in this area. Please pay attention.

Stacking the cards: One of the most commonly indulged fallacies, stacking the cards involves presenting only information that supports your point and ignoring facts that might undermine it.

In demanding Williams's death, you observe that the Crips street gang is "violent and predatory," but you fail to mention that Williams's efforts to negotiate truces between gangs have been responsible for saving many lives. For example, gang members in Newark, N.J. negotiated a truce based on the "Tookie Protocol for Peace" in 2004. Before signing the peace treaty, the gangs had been responsible for over 30 murders in the first four months of 2004 alone. After the truce, gang-related killing in Newark stopped, and the peace has held ever since.

Similarly, you claim that "authorities who have kept records on [Williams]" say that he is not a "model citizen." But again, you neglect to mention that other authorities who have "kept records" on Stan say just the opposite. In a San Quentin ICC Summary dated August 5, 2004, "Lt. G. Fuller stated that during his assignment in East Block he has not observed Williams in any gang involvement.  ICC commended Williams on his positive program over the last ten years."

Questionable cause: You quote statistics about gang violence, implying that Williams is responsible for the existence of gangs and the crimes they commit. In fact, gangs arise from conditions of poverty and a lack of opportunity. There is irrefutable evidence that gangs existed not only before Williams formed the Crips but also before he was born.

If the state of California succeeds in its barbarous intentions and executes Williams on the 13th, gangs will continue to exist until the problems of poverty and hopelessness are addressed. His execution, after he has done so much to redress his earlier wrongs, will only feed that hopelessness.

Fallacies are simply weak arguments. Unfortunately, your editorial also contains some factual errors. The evidence used to convict Williams was never "overwhelming;" if it had been, the prosecution wouldn't have needed to remove all African Americans from the jury, unconstitutionally keep Williams in shackles throughout the trial, or appeal to the all non-Black jury by using racist animal metaphors.

Had the evidence been "overwhelming," the prosecution would not have needed to resort to jailhouses snitches for testimony-individuals who, according to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, had "less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie in order to obtain leniency from the state in either charging or sentencing." If in possession of "overwhelming evidence," the police would not have had to reduce charges against aforementioned snitches, and wouldn't have had to use what a ballistics expert recently called "junk science" in their attempts to tie a gun once owned by Williams-but at the crucial moment found under the bed of the now twice mentioned snitches-to one of the murder scenes.

I advise you, as I advise my students, to have the courage of your convictions. Argue honestly. If you feel that Williams should be executed regardless of the good he has done, and might still do, regardless of the fact that his trial was racist and unjust and that, as a precedent, it undermines the right to a fair trial for every American, and regardless of the fact that there is no material evidence tying him to either crime scene, then say so. By indulging in fallacious argument, you open yourself up to easy refutation.

The murder of Stanley Tookie Williams by the state of California will not provide justice for Albert Owens, Yen I-Yang, Tshai-Shai Yang, and Yee-Chen Lin or their families. It will simply create more victims, more hopelessness, more despair.

Elizabeth Terzakis
Redwood City, CA