WILLIAMS
SAN FRANCISCO (AP):
A FEDERAL appeals court rejected a stay of execution yesterday for Crips co-founder Stanley 'Tookie' Williams who is scheduled to die after midnight unless California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spares his life.
Barring any reprieve, Williams, 51, was set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison early this morning for murdering four people in two 1979 hold-ups.
His case has stirred a debate in the United States over capital punish-ment and the possibility of redemption on death row after a campaign by death penalty opponents and Hollywood stars that made him one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebres in decades.
Williams, 51, was condemned in 1981 for gunning down a clerk in a convenience store hold-up and a mother, father and daughter in a motel robbery less than two weeks later. Williams claimed he was innocent.
He will become the 12th California condemned inmate executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a brief hiatus.
