The highly publicized trial of Williams and extensive appeals for clemency sparked debate on the status of the death penalty in California.

Tookie was sent to Los Padrinos and then to Central Juvenile Hall for the first time after the formation of the Crips, charged with a robbery at Clifton's restaurant which he denied participating in.

At age fifteen, Williams was invited into a small West Side clique after he befriended a local teenager, Donald "Doc/Sweetback" Archie.

While doing time at the detention center, Williams was introduced to Olympic weightlifting by the facility's gym coach, which would spark an interest in bodybuilding.

Washington was from South Central's East Side, where he was a prominent gangster similar to Williams, and proposed they use their influence in their respective regions to form the larger Crips street gang.

"[9] Williams stated he founded the Crips not with the intention of eliminating other gangs, but to create a force powerful enough to protect local black people from racism, corruption and brutality at the hands of the police.

Washington, Williams and Thomas went on an aggressive and violent recruitment campaign throughout the black ghettos of Los Angeles, where they challenged the leaders of other gangs to one-on-one street fights.

Williams and his best friend, Curtis "Buddha" Morrow, would noticeably participate in these activities, striking fear into both street criminals and the residents of South Central, Watts, Inglewood, and Compton.

Williams began to live an ironic double life in which he worked as an anti-gang youth counselor in Compton[10] while also serving as the overboss for one of the largest gangs in Los Angeles.

Eventually his gangster lifestyle was beginning to take a mental toll on him, which included a brief stay in the psychiatric ward of a hospital after Williams experienced a bad trip while high on PCP.

The first incident occurred at a nearby Stop-N-Go supermarket, where Darryl and Sims, at the request of Williams, entered the store with the apparent intention of robbing it.

Williams had shot at a security monitor and then killed Owens, shooting him twice in the back at point-blank range as he lay prone on the storage room floor.

[14] From the beginning of his sentence, Williams maintained his innocence regarding the four murders, alleging prosecutorial misconduct, exclusion of exculpatory evidence, ineffective assistance of counsel, biased jury selection, and the misuse of jailhouse and government informants.

[15] Williams claimed that the police found "not a shred of tangible evidence, no fingerprints, no crime scenes of bloody boot prints.

They maintain that the trial record indicates that "none of the lawyers, and particularly the prosecutor, thought Mr. McLurkin was black", according to additional evidence in a November 2005 petition for clemency.

[16] According to the clemency petition, in his closing arguments, prosecuting District Attorney Robert Martin described Williams as a "Bengal tiger in captivity in a zoo" and said that the jury needed to imagine him in his natural "habitat", which was like "going into the back country, into the hinterlands."

[19] In the Court of Appeal summary of the case, Williams stated that various jurors misconstrued as a threat a question that he asked defense counsel at the close of the guilt phase.

The San Francisco Chronicle writer Bob Egelko doubted this method, based on the courts handling the appeals, and quoted Austin Sarat, professor of law and politics at Amherst College and author of Mercy on Trial, a book about compassion: Sarat said that actual innocence is "about the only ground in which governors grant clemency in the modern period ...

"[27] On December 8, 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger held a clemency hearing at a one-hour, closed-door meeting, where a crowd consisting of both supporters of Williams and proponents of capital punishment congregated outside the California State Capitol in Sacramento.

Celebrities also joined to stop the execution, including Snoop Dogg, who appeared at a clemency rally wearing a shirt advertising the Save Tookie website and performed a song he had written for Williams.

[36] On the same day that Schwarzenegger denied Williams clemency, Jonathan Harris, a New York counsel with Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP, filed a response summarizing new evidence of innocence.

Von Ellerman also observed Oglesby copying from samples of Williams' handwriting to "create incriminating documents that would appear to be written by Mr.

"[38] Prosecutors had cited handwritten notes written by Williams about an escape plan that involved the killing of a bus driver and another accomplice.

[11] On December 13, 2005, sixteen days away from his 52nd birthday, after exhausting all forms of appeal, Williams was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison.

[39] Williams provided no last words to the prison warden, but in an interview on WBAI Pacifica radio hours before the execution, he stated:[40] ¨My lack of fear of this barbaric methodology of death, I rely upon my faith.

which is the first time I ever heard any outburst in the death chamber there.After Williams was pronounced dead at 12:35 a.m. PST (08:35 UTC), several reporters who witnessed the execution held a news conference.

[46] Becnel reacted to Williams's execution by saying, "We are going to prove his innocence, and when we do, we are going to show that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is, in fact, himself a cold blooded murderer.

Williams's funeral filled the 1,500-seat Bethel AME Church and drew a wide variety of people from current gang members to celebrities and religious leaders.

[51]In his birth nation of Austria, Schwarzenegger faced backlash over the execution on December 19 from left-wing councillors in Graz, who announced that they were seeking to strip him of his Austrian citizenship.

[55] Travon is a married father who owns a home and works for a social services agency in the Los Angeles area, said Barbara Becnel, Stanley Williams' co-author.