US: Hollywood stars and capital punishment opponents have condemned the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, who was killed by lethal injection at California's San Quentin prison yesterday morning.
More than 2,000 people demonstrated outside the prison during the execution after California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, rejected a plea for clemency.
Williams died at 12.35am local time after his veins were filled with pancuronium bromide to stop his breathing and potassium chloride to stop his heart. The officials administering the injection took 12 minutes to find a vein in Williams's left arm, during which witnesses said the prisoner became agitated and asked if something had gone wrong.
When a prison officer announced that Williams was dead, three of his supporters who witnessed the execution shouted: "The state of California just killed an innocent man."
Outside, demonstrators heard speeches and statements condemning the execution, including messages from the Rev Jesse Jackson, folk singer Joan Baez and actors Mike Farrell and Sean Penn.
"Tonight is planned, efficient, calculated, antiseptic, cold-blooded murder, and I think everyone who is here is here to try to enlist the morality and soul of this country," Ms Baez said.
Williams was convicted in 1981 of shooting dead shop assistant Albert Owens (26) at a convenience store and killing Yen-I Yang (76), Tsai-Shai Chen Yang (63) and their daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin (43) at their Los Angeles motel.
Williams claimed he was innocent, but witnesses at the trial said he boasted about the killings. Williams's supporters said the former Crips gang leader should have been spared because he had reformed in prison, where he wrote children's books warning about the dangers of gangs.
But Mr Schwarzenegger noted that Williams had never expressed remorse for the murders committed by the Crips gang and questioned the authenticity of his transformation in prison.
"Is Williams's redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?
"Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption," the governor said in a statement rejecting Williams's appeal.
The last time a California governor granted clemency to a prisoner on death row was in 1967, when Ronald Reagan spared the life of a mentally retarded man.
The high-profile campaign to save Williams, which was led by actor Jamie Foxx and rapper Snoop Dogg, has energised opponents of capital punishment.
Popular support for the death penalty has fallen in recent years, fewer executions are taking place and judges are handing down fewer death sentences. Thousands of Americans remain on death row, however - 647 in California alone.
The next person due to be executed in California is Clarence Ray Allen, who is 75 years old, blind and uses a wheelchair.