D. Allan Kerr on The Tookster

In a classic old 1938 movie called "Angels with Dirty Faces," gangster Jimmy Cagney is sent to the electric chair. His boyhood chum, priest Pat O’Brien (not the "Access Hollywood" guy), asks the Cagney character, Rocky Sullivan, to debunk his tough-guy image so the Dead End Kids who idolize him won’t follow in his path. I can’t do that, Cagney says, it’s the only thing I got left. But as he’s being led to the execution chamber, Cagney suddenly starts wailing, struggling to break free from his guards. He literally has to be dragged into the chamber.

"Rocky Dies Yellow -- Killer Coward to the End," the headlines scream the next day. The Dead End kids can’t believe it. Is it true, Fadda? They ask O’Brien. Yes it is, boys, he says. Then at the end of the movie he leads them out to church to "pray for somebody who couldn’t run as fast as me."

If the battle over Tookie’s fate is truly a question of what would best benefit the world in which he introduced such horror, and if the man is now at peace with himself and his God, wouldn’t that kind of sacrifice go a long way toward his genuine redemption?