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(Demonstrators outside the gates of San Quentin State Prison protest at the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams.) (John G Mabanglo/EPA) Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the co-founder of the notorious Crips street gang, whose apparent rehabilitation in prison opened a bitter debate over the death penalty in America, was executed this morning in California. The 51-year-old died by lethal injection at 12.35am local time (8.35GMT) at San Quentin prison in front of about 50 witnesses, including relatives of the four people he killed in 1979. He asked his own family not to attend. Williams was denied a stay of execution by...

THE TOOKIE FILES: NOTES ON THE FREAK SHOW By Michelle Malkin   ·   December 12, 2005 11:40 PM ***scroll for rolling updates*** It's a zoo outside San Quentin prison, where convicted murderer/Crips gang co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams is scheduled to die by injection at San Quentin Prison at 12:01am Pacific time for murdering four people during two 1979 holdups. Live KPIX video feed outside San Quentin here. (Hat tip: Reader Dave.) Photos via readers and Yahoo!: Jesse Jackson, the racial demagogue-turned-wannabe Death Row gawker, is desperately lobbying to be one of Tookie Williams' execution witnesses, according to cable news reports. Reader...

WHEN I'M WRONG, I'M WRONG It looks like I missed on two predictions yesterday. First, Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't grant clemency to the murderous Tookie Williams. He was put to a much-deserved death last night.. It only took the State of California 24 years to carry out a sentence entered in 1981. Williams should have been shot-gunned to death, the same way his victims did. Second, there was no rioting in Los Angeles. Everyone's flat-screen TV and Ibox seems to be safe, for now. Someone correctly opined yesterday that it was too cold in Los Angeles for riots right now. The...

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. (AP) -- Convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams, the Crips gang co-founder whose case stirred a national debate about capital punishment versus the possibility of redemption, was executed early Tuesday. Williams, 51, died at 12:35 a.m. Officials at San Quentin State Prison seemed to have trouble injecting the lethal mixture into his muscular arm. As they struggled to find a vein, Williams looked up repeatedly and appeared frustrated, shaking his head at supporters and other witnesses. "You doing that right?" it sounded as if he asked one of the men with a needle. After he was declared dead,...