Gang chief claimed innocence until death

STANLEY Tookie Williams, who was executed in California yesterday, maintained his innocence right up until his death, even when an admission of guilt may have spared him execution.

Even after the courts and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a flurry of Williams’s last-ditch appeals before his execution early yesterday, his supporters vowed to prove his innocence.

Williams, the Crips gang co-founder whose case stirred a national debate about capital punishment versus the possibility of redemption, was executed for killing four people in 1979.