NAACP Calls for Sparing Williams

The NAACP is hoping to call more attention to Williams' help in rehabilitating gang members -- and, critics say, trying to rejuvenate an aging organization by linking it to a cause embraced by hip-hop stars.

In his first public appearance in California since taking charge of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in August, Bruce S. Gordon darted from Los Angeles to San Diego and from Sacramento to San Francisco to pressure Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence of Williams -- convicted of killing four people -- to life in prison.

In recent weeks, many politicians, organizations and celebrities, including rap star Snoop Dogg, have called for the governor to stop the execution. Williams is already serving a life sentence; the only question is whether he will be put to death.

The inmate, who maintains his innocence and has won international attention for his children's books denouncing gang violence, is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday unless the governor commutes the sentence.

In a news conference at Los Angeles City Hall, Gordon said, "If we believe prison is intended for reform and we believe the criminal justice system makes mistakes," then Williams should be spared.

The prisoner, 51, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1981 for the 1979 shotgun slaying of Albert Owens, a clerk at a 7-Eleven in Whittier, and for the murders 11 days later of Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yu-Chin Yang Lin at their family-run motel in Los Angeles.

Schwarzenegger has said he faces the clemency decision with dread.

"It is one of the most difficult decisions that any governor faces, and he is preparing for it in the serious manner that it deserves and merits," spokeswoman Margita Thompson said.

Legal scholar Alfred Blumstein of the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University said: "This is a case in which the governor could do well by providing clemency. Here's a guy who is producing a social benefit."

That kind of talk "irritates the hell out of me," said social critic Joe R. Hicks, vice president of Community Advocate and former director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.