SAN QUENTIN, Calif. -- Stanley Tookie Williams, whose self-described evolution from gang thug to antiviolence crusader won him an international following and nominations for a Nobel Peace Prize, was set to die by lethal injection early today, hours after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to spare his life.

		Update SAN QUENTIN, Calif. -- Convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams was executed this morning at about 12:35 a.m. after receiving a lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison, officials said. Before the execution, he was "complacent, quiet and thoughtful," Corrections Department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said. Former Crips member Donald Archie, 51, was among those attending a candlelight vigil. He said he would work to spread Williams' anti-gang message. "The work ain't going to stop," said Mr. Archie, who said he was known as "Sweetback" as a young Crips member. "Tookie's body might lay down, but his spirit ain't going nowhere. I want everyone to know that, the spirit lives." -- Kim Curtis, Associated Press

Despite persistent pleas for mercy from around the globe, the governor said Mr. Williams was unworthy of clemency because he had not admitted his brutal shotgun murders of four people during two robberies 26 years ago.

Barring a last-minute court stay, the co-founder of the infamous Crips street gang -- who insisted that he was innocent -- was expected to become the 12th man executed by the state of California since voters reinstated capital punishment in 1978.

As evening descended yesterday, hundreds of demonstrators braved frosty temperatures to protest the execution -- and pray for a reprieve -- outside the gates of San Quentin State Prison. Led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, several dozen had marched 16 miles to the prison from San Francisco in the morning. Security in the area was tight, and surrounding roads were closed.

Inside the prison's walls, Mr. Williams passed the day quietly in a holding cell just steps from the death chamber, visiting with friends and talking on the phone while under constant watch by guards.

A prison spokesman said Mr. Williams was "calm and upbeat." The Rev. Jackson said he met twice with Mr. Williams and, together with journalist Barbara Becnel, who co-authored Mr. Williams' anti-gang book series, delivered the news that the governor had denied clemency. Mr. Williams smiled "as if he expected it," the Rev. Jackson said, adding that he thought that "his baggage as a Crip was on trial more than for the four murders."

In recent public statements, Mr. Williams has expressed a philosophical attitude toward his own death. Fred Jackson, 67, who works with Internet Project for Street Peace, Mr. Williams' gang intervention project, said Mr. Williams had reiterated these feelings while talking to a support group Sunday.

Mr. Williams refused the condemned man's privilege of a special last meal and declined to meet with a spiritual adviser. The Rev. Jackson said that he urged that Mr. Williams relent and have a witness or spiritual adviser present. "You should not die looking into the eyes of the executioner," said the minister.

The only visitors permitted access into the night were the warden or a religious adviser.

Nearby, the injection team made their final preparations in the prison's converted gas chamber, ensuring that their stock of needles, tubes and chemicals were in place.

The other 5,500 inmates at the prison on the northeastern shore of San Francisco Bay were locked in their cells throughout the day. Wardens elsewhere in the state's sprawling correctional system were on alert for possible violence.

Mr. Williams summoned no friends or family members to witness the execution, scheduled just 16 days shy of his 52nd birthday. In a recent interview, he said it was "appalling" to think that he would invite someone to observe "the sick and perverted spectacle."

But relatives of one of his victims, Albert Owens, were expected to be among the 50 witnesses who assembled late last night as guards prepared to inject a lethal mix of chemicals into the inmate's arms.

Lora Owens said she did not expect the execution to end the ache over losing her red-haired stepson, who was killed by shotgun at age 26 while working at a convenience store late one February night in 1979. But watching the killer take his last breath, she said, might help her "let it go" just a bit.

With its racial overtones and compelling theme -- society's dueling goals of redemption and retribution -- the case provoked controversy and made it a magnet for media worldwide.

A long list of prominent supporters -- as disparate as South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and rapper Snoop Dogg -- rallied to Mr. Williams' cause, characterizing him as the personification of redemption, a man who had renounced his violent past and turned into a powerful force for peace. After a clemency hearing before Mr. Schwarzenegger last week, lead attorney Peter Fleming Jr. said Mr. Williams had unmatched credibility as a messenger urging youths to say no to gangs.

"The whole thrust of his message is, 'Don't do what I did; what I did was despicable. Reject violence, find purpose, strive,' " Mr. Fleming said.

But law enforcement officials and victims' rights leaders portrayed Mr. Williams as a fraud whose influence on would-be gangsters was overblown. His supporters, they suggested, were well-meaning but misguided do-gooders who had been deceived by a seasoned con.

Prosecutors said the absence of a confession, and Mr. Williams' refusal to formally cut ties with the Crips by sharing his knowledge of gang tactics with police, put the lie to his claim of rehabilitation.

"What kind of message does that send to young children, when somebody like Mr. Williams, who supposedly has their attention, tells them, 'Don't snitch, don't talk to police, don't tell people who was involved in a crime?' " argued John Monaghan, a Los Angeles deputy district attorney.

As Mr. Schwarzenegger pondered, attorneys for Mr. Williams spent the weekend hunting for a court that might issue a stay. On Sunday, the state Supreme Court turned back arguments that his trial was "fundamentally unfair," in part because prosecutors failed to disclose that key witness Alfred Coward was a violent ex-felon.

Lawyer Verna Wefald then shifted her efforts to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which yesterday afternoon refused both a reprieve and a rehearing. Lawyers ultimately turned to the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution.