A DATE has been set for the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, a Nobel-prize nominee who co-founded the Crips street gang in 1971 but has since been praised by President Bush for his good deeds.

Williams, 51, is a convicted murderer who has written children’s books disavowing gang violence while on death row. He once negotiated a peace treaty between rival gangs and has been nominated five times for a Nobel Peace Prize and four times for a Nobel Prize for Literature. He is to be executed on December 13.

The judge rejected a lawyer’s request for more time to prepare an appeal for clemency, which must be presented to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, by November 8. Ronald Reagan was his most recent predecessor to grant clemency in a death penalty case, in 1967.

“It has taken over 24 years to get to this point,” said Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders, who signed Williams’s death warrant yesterday. “That is a long delay and I would hate to add to that delay.”

Williams was sentenced to death in 1981 for killing Albert Owens, who worked at a 7Eleven convenience store. He was also convicted of killing the owners of a Los Angeles motel and their daughter during a robbery.

At his trial a witness who had been given immunity by the Government testified that he, Williams and two other men had smoked cigarettes laced with the drug PCP before the 7-Eleven robbery. The witness said that Williams had destroyed the store’s CCTV monitor before shooting Mr Owens in the head. Four other witnesses testified against him in the motel case. To this day Williams maintains his innocence.

In February judges ruled 15-9 against allowing Williams a final hearing over claims that he was a victim of racist jury selection. All three black candidates who had been eligible to sit on the jury were rejected.

Williams has won praise for his rehabilitation. In August he was given a President’s Call to Service Award for his good deeds and received a letter from President Bush congratulating him for showing “the outstanding character of America”.

Williams was also the subject of a favourable 2004 television film called Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story. He was played by Jamie Foxx, the Oscar-winning actor.

The film resulted in Williams receiving thousands of e-mails from gang members who said that his story had inspired them to change their lives.

Opponents of the death penalty have also rallied to Williams’s cause. They held a demonstration outside the courtroom where his death warrant was signed, holding up a banner that read “Keeping Him Alive Saves Lives!” One of the protestors was Mike Farrell, the actor who played Captain Hunnicutt in M*A*S*H. “It’s a simple, sterile, ministerial procedure in which a human life is scheduled to be expunged without consideration for his value, his change, his transformation,” he said.

Other supporters of Williams include Rabbi Steven Jacobs of California’s Kol Tikvah temple.

He said: “This man has been rehabilitated.”

BLOODS v CRIPS

In 2004 Stanley “Tookie” Williams helped to negotiate a “perpetual peace treaty” between the rival gangs. Violence decreased, but gangland killings and warfare persist

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