Crips Founder's Appeal Rejected

The Supreme Court refused Tuesday to take the case of California death row inmate Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a founder of the Crips street gang whose later work for peace won him Nobel Peace Prize nominations.

Williams, who has been praised for his children's books and efforts to curtail youth gang violence, likely will be executed in December if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does not grant clemency. The 51-year-old former gang member claims Los Angeles prosecutors violated his rights when they dismissed all potential black jurors.

Williams, who claims he is innocent, is in line to be one of three California condemned inmates to be executed within months. He was condemned for killing four people in 1981 and claims jailhouse informants fabricated testimony that he confessed to the murders.

"We feel very strongly that this is an appropriate case for clemency because of what Stan has accomplished," said Andrea Asaro, one of Williams' attorneys.

While in prison, Williams has been nominated five times for a Nobel Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Prize for literature for his series of children's books and international peace efforts intended to curtail youth gang violence.

In August he received an award for his good deeds, complete with a letter from President Bush praising him for demonstrating "the outstanding character of America."

Barbara Becnel, Williams' spokeswoman and co-author, said at the time she believes he is the first death row inmate to receive the service award created in 2003 to honor Americans who inspire volunteerism.

One of Williams' books, 1998's "Life in Prison," led to the Internet Project for Street Peace, an afterschool violence prevention program.

In 1999, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former African National Congress Women's League president, visited Williams at San Quentin because she was inspired by the Internet project.

His case reached the justices following after a San Francisco-based appeals court, as well as the Supreme Court, refused to grant Williams another hearing based on his argument that prosecutors had violated his rights when they dismissed all potential black jurors from hearing the case.

The San Francisco appellate court had suggested he was a good candidate for clemency. The judges cited the children's books he has written from prison, in addition to messages of peace he posts on the Internet.

The California Criminal Justice Legal Foundation is urging against clemency, and no California governor has granted clemency to a condemned murderer since Ronald Reagan spared the life of a severely brain-damaged killer in 1967.

"Perhaps now he will finally get the punishment that a jury unanimously agreed he deserved," said the group's president, Michael Rushford.

Schwarzenegger has rejected clemency for the first two condemned men asking to commute their sentences to life without parole. In Schwarzenegger's latest rejection in January, he said an inmate's model behavior in prison was not enough to sway him to grant mercy. That inmate, Donald Beardslee, was executed days later.

Williams and a high school buddy started the Crips street gang in Los Angeles in 1971.

Williams was sentenced to death in 1981 for fatally shooting a convenience store worker. He also was convicted of using a shotgun a few days later to kill two Los Angeles motel owners and their daughter during a robbery.

Last year, "Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story" aired on television, prompting thousands of e-mail messages to Williams from young gang members who said his life story helped them turn their lives around.

"Today is a shameful day in the history of American jurisprudence," said Becnel. "Today the U.S. Supreme Court has said in its ruling essentially that it is OK for a white prosecutor to kick all of the African Americans off of a jury."