Schwarzenegger Terminates Another Prisoner!

For the second time in just 4 weeks, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied clemecy to another of California's death row inmates.

After refusing to grant clemency last month, to gang leader Stan 'Tookie' Williams, Schwarzenegger said on Friday he would not spare the life of the state's oldest condemned man, Clarence Ray Allen, who is scheduled for execution on Tuesday, a day after he turns 76.

Allen, who is legally blind, uses a wheelchair and suffers from chronic heart disease and diabetes, would be the second-oldest man executed in the United States in recent decades.

A 77-year-old man in Mississippi last month became the oldest person executed in the United States since it resumed capital punishment in 1977.

"His conduct did not result from youth or inexperience, but instead resulted from the hardened and calculating decisions of a mature man," Schwarzenegger said in statement explaining why he denied clemency to Allen.

Schwarzenegger said Allen's age and poor health should not prevent his execution.

"Allen's death sentence has been delayed due to litigation. Our justice system provides Allen the right to challenge his convictions and sentence, and he has done so for the last 23 years. Allen should not escape the jury's punishment because our system works deliberately and carefully," Schwarzenegger said.

Allen says he is innocent and his lawyers have filed last-ditch appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stay his execution.

The celebrity governor had denied clemency requests in the three previous cases he has reviewed since taking office in 2003.

A federal judge in Sacramento, California, on Thursday declined to block Allen's execution, finding there is no U.S. Supreme Court precedent to support arguments that executing an elderly and ill prisoner would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

"Nothing about his advanced age or his physical infirmities ... affected his culpability at the time he committed the capital offenses," U.S. District Judge Frank Damrell Jr. wrote.

Global Arnold Staff

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