Calif. Court Won't Spare Gang Founder

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 30 -- The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to halt the scheduled execution of convicted killer Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the Crips gang founder who became an anti-gang activist while in prison and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In a last-ditch legal move, defense attorneys petitioned the high court in early November, alleging that shoddy forensic testing and other errors may have wrongly sent Williams to San Quentin State Prison, where he is scheduled die by injection Dec. 13.

The defense derided as "junk science" ballistics evidence showing that a shotgun registered to Williams was used to kill three people during a 1979 motel robbery. The attorneys asked the court to allow reexamination of the evidence.

Prosecutors argued there was no good reason to reopen Williams's case. Allegations about the shotgun evidence were based not on fact but on "innuendo, supposition and the patent bias of his purported expert," prosecutors said.

The high court voted 4 to 2 without comment to deny the inmate's petition. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) or a federal court could still intervene to spare Williams, 51.

Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, expressed satisfaction with the ruling. "The extraordinary relief Williams sought is reserved for those cases which have legal merit," he said.

Williams, condemned in 1981, has maintained his innocence. Among his contentions is that fabricated testimony sent him to death row.

The California Supreme Court, federal trial and appeals courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court have already ruled against him.

Williams is asking for clemency from Schwarzenegger in the killing of three people in the motel robbery and of a clerk in a separate incident.

Clemency would commute his sentence to life without parole.