Oldest Inmate on Death Row Petitions Gov. for Clemency

The state’s oldest death row convict asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency Tuesday, a day after the governor rejected a bid for mercy from Stanley Tookie Williams, allowing the Crips co-founder to die by lethal injection.

Clarence Ray Allen, 75, said he was too frail to be put to death Jan. 17 as scheduled. In 1980, while serving at Folsom State Prison for arranging the 1974 murder of his son’s girlfriend, Allen ordered the killings of eight witnesses against him in a related market burglary case in Fresno. His hit man killed a witness and two market employees.

In his petition, Allen claims that his physical infirmities, including a recent heart attack, have left him nearly deaf and blind and warrant a reprieve.

“He prays for that mercy because he is aged and infirm, suffering from chronic diseases that have been aggravated by the grossly inadequate medical treatment he has received at San Quentin and that have left him unable to walk, nearly blind, hard of hearing, and so physically incapacitated that his execution for the purpose of incapacitating him from the commission of further crime is manifestly unnecessary,” his attorney, Michael Satris, wrote to Schwarzenegger.

Although Satris also questions Allen’s guilt, the petition presents Schwarzenegger -- who has rejected all three petitions for clemency that have come before him -- with a far different claim: that physical infirmities are grounds for clemency.

The inmates whose bids for clemency were rejected asserted their innocence or said they should be spared because they had behaved well in prison. Williams’ attorneys argued both his innocence and good behavior.