Arnold Denies Williams' Appeal

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused Monday 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 not swayed 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 a series of 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 in writing 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."

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

Just earlier Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a stay of execution for Williams.

After a campaign by death penalty opponents and Hollywood stars that made him one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebrities in decades.

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.

Over the years, the case has been reviewed by courts at every level, and the verdict has been upheld every time, reports CBS News correspondent Steve Futterman.

The state's high court on Sunday unanimously ruled, 6-0, saying the last-minute appeal lacked merit and was untimely as well. The appeal said, among other things, that Williams should have been allowed to argue at his murder trial that someone else killed one of his four alleged victims.

The justices had turned down another appeal from Williams days earlier.

Immediately after the decision, Williams' lawyers filed a virtually identical petition with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. A decision was expected Monday.

There aren't a whole lot of legal issues to consider when a case gets down to the clemency stage, says CBSNews.com Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen. At that point, the issue is as much political as it is legal because of course there is no appeal from a clemency ruling. So Williams' last best chance is in federal court and he hasn't had much success there, either.

Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency 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.

Defense attorneys eagerly awaited Schwarzenegger's decision on whether to grant Williams clemency. They have asked the governor to spare the condemned man's life with the claim that Williams, who has written several children's books extolling the evils of gang life, has redeemed himself during 24 years at San Quentin State Prison.

"We are awaiting the governor's position on clemency," Williams' clemency attorney Jonathan Harris said.

Schwarzenegger has not granted clemency to two other prisoners since he was elected in 2003, but said last week he was agonizing over what to do in the Williams case. The last time clemency was granted in California was back in 1967, when Ronald Reagan was governor, reports CBS News' Teri Okita. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, 11 inmates have been put to death.

Williams denies committing the murders but has apologized for co-founding the Crips, a gang prosecutors blamed for thousands of murders in Los Angeles and beyond. Prosecutors and family members of the victims have sternly urged the governor to deny clemency, among other things arguing that Williams has not redeemed himself and denies his guilt.

State prosecutors had implored the state Supreme Court early Sunday to dismiss Williams' appeal. The request, filed by Pasadena attorney Verna Wefald, "is without merit and is manifestly designed for delay," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Brault wrote the justices.

Brault's brief came hours after Wefald urged the state Supreme Court to call off the execution, contending that Los Angeles County prosecutors failed to disclose at Williams' 1981 trial that witness Alfred Coward was not a U.S. citizen and that he had a violent criminal history. The failure resulted in "depriving Williams of the opportunity to mount a defense" that Coward was Owens' killer, Wefald wrote.

Coward is now in prison in Canada for the murder of a man during a robbery.

"All of the witnesses who implicated Williams were criminals who were given significant incentives to testify against him and ongoing benefits for their testimony," Wefald wrote.

The petition also challenged the validity of all four of Williams' capital murder convictions, and noted that a bill calling for a death penalty moratorium in California is scheduled to be heard in the state Legislature in January.

The justices previously had denied a request by Wefald to reopen the case based on allegations that shoddy forensics linked a weapon used in three of the murders to a shotgun registered to Williams.

The California Supreme Court, a federal district court judge in Los Angeles, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court all have upheld Williams' convictions in earlier appeals.

"I don't think this case is going to have national ramifications," says Cohen. "Each state handles these capital cases differently and obviously Williams presents unique questions and issues — That's why so many people are paying so much attention. But I don't think his fate, whatever it is, will determine the fate of others."

In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, Williams wrote that he doesn't want any sympathy. He also doesn't want the special, traditional last meal, ministers, and he doesn't want anyone watching him die, and that includes family and friends. The death chamber allows for up to 50 witnesses to watch the execution. Seventeen of those will be media witnesses.