Clemency rarely granted to death row inmates

Hollywood celebrities have lobbied for Williams' life to be spared.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Politics and history will not be on Stanley Tookie Williams' side Thursday when the founder of the murderous Crips gang asks Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to revoke his death sentence for killing four people during two robberies 26 years ago.
Except for Illinois Gov. George Ryan's 2003 decision to clear out death row in his final hours in office, clemency is a gubernatorial option rarely exercised in today's tough-on-crime climate.
"There are three reasons why clemency is hardly given now," said Michael Radelet, a University of Colorado sociology professor. "One is politics. Two is politics and three is politics."
The last California governor to grant clemency was Ronald Reagan in 1967, but the case was far different from Williams' situation and times have changed dramatically since then.
Numbers
The life-and-death power bestowed on the kings of England and transferred to governors and presidents of the United States has become a little-used option in the three decades since states resumed executions.
Before 1976, the year the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume after a brief hiatus, clemency was routinely granted. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 204 inmates nationwide were spared between 1960 and 1970.
Excluding the 167 Illinois inmates whose death sentences were commuted in 2003, only 63 lives have been spared since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Most of those acts of mercy were the result of defendants' mental infirmities, doubts about their guilt, or efforts to build confidence in the death penalty system. Last week Virginia's governor commuted a death sentence because a pair of bloody scissors was improperly destroyed after the trial, depriving the defense of the opportunity to conduct new DNA tests.
Scheduled to die
Williams, 51, is scheduled to die by injection just after midnight Tuesday for gunning down four people at a convenience store and a motel in 1979. He claims he is innocent, but all the courts that reviewed his case have refused to reopen it.
Hollywood celebrities, capital punishment foes and others contend he has redeemed himself at San Quentin Prison and undergone a death row conversion from gang leader to a man of peace. He has written anti-gang books for children, and many gang members have said his teachings helped them change their ways.
"If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked in Williams' petition, "what meaning does clemency retain in this state?"
Prosecutors and victims' relatives say he does not deserve mercy because he has not acknowledged guilt and has refused to inform on his gang cohorts.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers will have an hour in private with Schwarzenegger on Thursday to argue their cases. Schwarzenegger has said only that it is a weighty decision and he will give it serious thought.
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