Stanley 'Tookie' Williams

CALIFORNIA, USA. COURT DECLINES TO STAY STANLEY WILLIAMS’ EXECUTION

November 30, 2005: the California Supreme Court refused to stop the execution due on December 13 of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the 51-year-old founder of the notorious Crips gang, who is set to die by lethal injection at California's San Quentin prison on December 13. 
The court voted 4-2 to deny a motion to reopen the case, shifting the focus to efforts by supporters of Williams to convince California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant an 11th-hour clemency appeal.
Williams' case has sparked the fiercest battle over capital punishment in California in years, and comes as the United States nears its 1,000th execution since 1977, when the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.
Attorneys for Williams had filed a motion to reopen his case on November 10 with California's highest court.
Schwarzenegger, who is scheduled to meet with prosecutors and attorneys for Williams on December 8 declined to say whether he would grant clemency. He has rejected two previous clemency requests from death row inmates, though one of those executions was stayed by a federal court.
Williams was convicted of shooting Albert Lewis Owens to death during a 1979 convenience store holdup and of killing three members of an Asian-American family while robbing their motel.
He maintains his innocence and has written a series of books urging children to reject violence, a record that supporters used in nominating him for a Nobel Peace prize. Prosecutors say Williams is an unrepentant killer who deserves death.
Williams has argued in his appeals that prosecutors tried to keep blacks off the jury that convicted him and has challenged forensic evidence in the case.
California, which has more than 600 people on death row, has executed 11 convicts since the death penalty was reinstated in the nation's most populous state. (Sources: Reuters, 30/11/2005)