Schwarzenegger refuses to block execution

With the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting his final appeal, Williams, 51, was set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison just after midnight California time for murdering four people during two 1979 holdups.

Williams' case became one of the nation's biggest death-row cause célèbres in decades. It set off a nationwide debate over the possibility of redemption on death row, with Hollywood stars and capital punishment foes arguing that Williams had made amends by writing children's books about the dangers of gangs.

But Schwarzenegger suggested that Williams' supposed change of heart was not genuine, noting among other things that the inmate had not owned up to his crimes or shown any real remorse for the countless killings committed by the Crips.

"Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?" Schwar-zenegger wrote less than 12 hours before the scheduled execution. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption."

Williams stood to become the 12th person executed in California since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977.

He was condemned in 1981 for murdering convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven in Whittier and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and the couple's daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at their Los Angeles motel.

Just before the governor announced his decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals denied Williams' request for a reprieve, saying there was no "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence."

Later in the evening, additional last-ditch requests to halt the execution were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit and Schwarzenegger.

Updated coverage of the scheduled execution at www.azstarnet.com