California gang leader faces execution

SAN FRANCISCO - Stanley "Tookie" Williams, founder of the notorious Crips gang in Los Angeles, could be executed for murder later this year after the US Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear his case.

Without comment or recorded dissent, the US Supreme Court declined to review the case in which defence attorneys argued that the prosecutor had racially discriminated in selecting a jury to try Williams, who is black.

Convicted of four murders, Williams could be executed in as little as 30 days, a state spokesman said, although the implementation of the sentence could be put off until early 2006.

The court's denial of Williams' appeal does not amount to a ruling on the legal merits of the case.

A California jury convicted Williams in 1981 of the murders two years earlier of a white convenience-store clerk in a US$120 ($174) robbery and of three Asian-American family members who owned a Los Angeles hotel in a robbery of US$50.

- REUTERS