Ailing killer executed at age 76 / Condemned for 3 slayings, Allen is oldest ever put to death in state

Clarence Ray Allen, a twice-convicted murderer enfeebled by age and illness after more than two decades on Death Row, was executed by lethal injection early today at San Quentin State Prison for ordering three killings from his prison cell in 1980.

Allen, who turned 76 on Monday, was pronounced dead at 12:38 a.m., a prison spokeswoman said. He is the oldest prisoner ever executed in California and one of the oldest ever put to death in the United States.

The execution took longer than usual, about 18 minutes, and required a second dose of the heart-stopping chemical potassium chloride, the last of the three-chemical sequence, officials said.

Allen's last hope of avoiding execution was extinguished Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court denied his request for a stay. Allen was legally blind, suffered from diabetes, had a heart attack last September and was confined to a wheelchair, and his attorneys argued that executing a prisoner so old and sick would violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Only one justice, Stephen Breyer, voted to grant a stay.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had denied a clemency request Friday that also stressed Allen's age and infirmity. "The passage of time does not excuse Allen from the jury's punishment," Schwarzenegger said.

Allen was able to walk into the death chamber under his own power but was helped onto the gurney where the lethal drugs were administered.

Allen said "I love you" to friends and relatives watching the execution before the drugs took effect.

Allen spent most of his final day in a special visiting room at San Quentin with relatives, friends, members of his legal team and two spiritual advisers, prison officials said. Allen claimed Choctaw and Cherokee ancestry, and both spiritual advisers were American Indians. Prison officials gave him permission to wear a beaded headband and an Indian necklace into the death chamber.

"He was happy that we came," Allen's niece Rebekah Vaughn said. "Even though he was somber, he seemed to be in good spirits."

At 6 p.m. Allen was transferred to a "death watch" cell near the execution chamber, where his contact was limited to the spiritual advisers and prison staff. The cell also had a radio, a television and a telephone, which Allen used to call friends and relatives, officials said.

"He's making his peace," said Allen's attorney, Michael Satris. He said the execution would be "a low point in the history of California's administration of the death penalty."

Shortly after 7 p.m., Allen had his final meal: buffalo steak, white chicken meat from KFC, Indian pan-fried bread, sugar-free pecan pie, sugar-free black walnut ice cream and whole milk.

Other inmates were locked in their cells all day, a prison policy for executions.

This was California's second execution in just over a month. Stanley Tookie Williams, a co-founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles who became an activist against gang life and an author of books for children and youths while in prison, was executed Dec. 13 for four 1979 murders.

Another prisoner, Michael Morales, could be executed in late February for the rape and murder of a 17-year-old San Joaquin County girl in 1981.

The attorney general's office says four more executions are possible this year. Allen was the 13th prisoner put to death in California since the state resumed executions in 1992 after a 25-year halt.

The increase is due in part to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that brought more California cases under a 1996 federal law that limited the scope of prisoners' federal appeals. But state prosecutors say executions are likely to continue at a deliberate pace in California, which has 646 prisoners on Death Row, more than any other state.

An Assembly committee approved legislation last week to halt executions for two years while a state commission studies possible flaws in the death penalty system. But the measure faces a doubtful future in the Legislature and a likely veto from Schwarzenegger if it passes.

A sponsor of the moratorium bill, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, was among the witnesses at Allen's execution. Other witnesses included five of Allen's friends, his two spiritual advisers, and seven relatives or representatives of his victims, officials said.

Allen was sentenced to death in 1982 for the murders of Bryon Schletewitz, 27, Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18. All three were shot Sept. 5, 1980, while they were closing up a Fresno market.

Until he reached middle age, Allen hardly seemed like a candidate for Death Row. He went from growing up poor and picking cotton in Oklahoma to building a successful security firm in the San Joaquin Valley, where he even served a stint as a church deacon.

His friends and family said he loaned money to those in need, gave lavish gifts to his employees, framed his own poetry as presents and was dedicated to his two sons, whom he raised after he and his first wife divorced.

But there was also a sinister side to Allen. While in his 40s, officials say, Allen orchestrated eight residential and commercial robberies in the Central Valley. In some cases, he used his security firm to scope out a place in advance.

Prosecutors have described him as a charismatic figure who collected Fresno County's impressionable dregs and turned them into crime lieutenants.

In 1974, Allen and his crew burglarized Fran's Market, a country store on the east side of Fresno. Allen knew the owners, Raymond and Frances Schletewitz. In his less affluent days, he had rented a small house on their property for 75ドル a month. The Schletewitzes' daughter, Patricia Pendergrass, said there were times when Allen couldn't afford to pay the rent, so her father would let him work it off by tilling their grove.

But as Allen's security business grew, he was able to buy his own ranch in the area and stock it with fancy show horses, an airplane and a swimming pool.

To gain entrance to Fran's Market, Allen invited the Schletewitzes' son, Bryon, to a party. While Bryon was swimming, someone rifled through his pants pockets for a key to the store's security system. Allen and two associates broke into the market and stole 500ドル and money orders worth 10,000ドル.

Mary Sue Kitts, the 17-year-old girlfriend of Allen's son, told Bryon Schletewitz about the burglary.

Raymond Schletewitz confronted Allen, who denied knowing anything about the crime. According to associates who testified at his 1977 trial, he ordered his henchman Lee Furrow to kill Kitts because he wouldn't tolerate "snitches." When Furrow waffled, Allen told him he would end up dead, too, if he didn't do it, according to prosecutors.

Kitts was strangled and thrown into the Friant-Kern Canal, never to be found, according to investigators. Allen was convicted of Kitts' murder and sentenced to life in prison.

In Folsom Prison's cafeteria, Allen met a soon-to-be paroled inmate, Billy Ray Hamilton, and enlisted him to kill eight people who had testified against him at his trial, including Raymond and Bryon Schletewitz.

Allen's goals, according to prosecutors, were personal vengeance and to permanently silence the witnesses before his upcoming appeal. Another inmate testified he had heard Allen offer Hamilton 25,000ドル for the killings, said Deputy Attorney General Ward Campbell.

Allen is said to have smuggled instructions out of prison in his grandchild's diaper to his son so he could help Hamilton carry out the killings.

On Sept. 5, 1980, Hamilton and his girlfriend Connie Barbo went to Fran's Market and hung around until closing time. Hamilton then killed Bryon Schletewitz, Rocha and White at close range with a sawed-off shotgun. He also shot a fourth worker, Joe Rios, who survived.

Barbo was arrested at the scene, and Hamilton was caught a week later holding a hit list with the names and addresses of the eight witnesses. Barbo was sentenced to life in prison, and Hamilton was sent to join Allen on Death Row.

Born: Jan. 16, 1930,

in Blair, Okla.

Background: Picked cotton with his family as a child and ended his schooling by the eighth grade. Held jobs in the San Joaquin Valley as a warehouse manager, ranch hand and night watchman before starting a successful security firm in 1968.

Crimes: Convicted of ordering the 1974 murder of Mary Sue Kitts, 17, for implicating him in a grocery store burglary. Sentenced to life in prison. Convicted of orchestrating three 1980 murders from his prison cell; one of the victims had testified against him in his earlier trial. Sentenced to death.