AP Schwarzenegger Denies Clemency for Williams

Schwarzenegger Denies Clemency for Williams
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051212/ap_on_re_us/williams_execution

By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer 22 minutes ago

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday refused to spare the life of
Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the murderous Crips gang who
awaited execution after midnight in a case that stirred debate over
capital punishment and the possibility of redemption on death row.

Schwarzenegger was unswayed by pleas from Hollywood stars and
petitions from more than 50,000 people who said that Williams had
made amends during more than two decades in prison by writing a
memoir and children's books about the dangers of gangs.

"After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the
arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find
no justification for granting clemency," Schwarzenegger said, less
than 12 hours before the execution. "The facts do not justify
overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this
case."

Schwarzenegger could have commuted the death sentence to life in
prison without parole.

With a reprieve from the federal courts considered unlikely,
Williams, 51, was set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison
early Tuesday for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.

Williams' fate became one of the nation's biggest death-row cause
celebres in decades.

Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving
of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes
and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that
the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is
responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the
rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.

Williams stood to become the 12th California condemned inmate
executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a
brief hiatus.

Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down a clerk in a
convenience store holdup and a mother, father and daughter in a motel
robbery weeks later. Williams claimed he was innocent.

The last time a California governor granted clemency was in 1967,
when Ronald Reagan spared a mentally infirm killer. Schwarzenegger