Attorneys for convicted killer Stanley "Tookie" Williams pleaded their case for clemency today to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who will now decide whether the Crips co-founder will be executed.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the body-building co-founder of the Crips, is sentenced to die by lethal injection Tuesday. He was convicted of the murders of four people during a robbery spree in 1979.

In California, only the governor has the authority to commute a death sentence to life in prison.

Attorneys for Williams and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office each delivered 30 minutes of arguments to the governor, with prosecutors insisting that Williams deserved to die for the slayings and defense lawyers arguing that he has renounced gang violence.

Defense attorneys also planned to deliver a statement from Williams, although lead lawyer Peter Fleming was tight-lipped after the closed-door hearing.

"I'm not addressing how I feel, how the meeting went," Fleming told reporters in Sacramento. "I'm trying to make this as amusing and irrelevant a press conference as I possibly can."

Fleming said he had no idea when Schwarzenegger might make a decision. Fleming did say Williams continues to profess his innocence.

"When I first met Stanley, I said, `If you did this, you should confess to it, because it'll help,"' Fleming said. "But he said, `If my innocence will cost me my life, so be it."'

Williams reportedly met Schwarzenegger years ago when both were bodybuilders.

For months, anti-death penalty groups have rallied in support of Williams, who has written some children's books aimed at steering youths away from gangs. Supporters also have nominated him for Nobel prizes, for peace and in literature.

If granted clemency, Williams would become the first condemned murderer to be spared since executions resumed in California in 1992.

His lawyers argue that their client was convicted by a jury with no black members, and that much of the evidence against him is circumstantial. Attorneys also questioned the use of jailhouse informants at trial, but all legal appeals on Williams' behalf have failed since his 1981 convictions.

Prosecutors say Williams is a cold-blooded killer who never accepted responsibility for the murders of Albert Owens, a Whittier 7-Eleven employee, and the shotgun murders of Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yu-Chin Yang Lin at a South Vermont Avenue motel less than two weeks later.

In a 50-page response to Williams' petition for executive clemency, Los Angeles County prosecutors wrote that "this cold-blooded killer, Stanley Williams, now seeks mercy, the very mercy he so callously denied" the four murder victims.

Included in the response were letters from law enforcement officials and two family members of one of his victims, all urging Schwarzenegger to let the execution proceed.

Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, criticized the governor for even considering clemency.

"Tookie Williams is the co-founder of one of the most violent street gangs in Los Angeles. He has shown no remorse for the four people he brutally murdered and has offered no apology to the victims' families. A jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. He has exhausted every judicial appeal over the past 20 years. It is time that the sentence imposed upon him is carried out."

Spitzer, a former prosecutor with the Orange County District Attorney's Office, said the numerous appeals allowed in death penalty cases "are ridiculous and arguably add to people's cynicism of the criminal justice system."

Williams, now 51, was 16 when he and a high school friend, Raymond Washington, began the Crips in South Los Angeles in 1971. Washington was later shot to death.

Since being condemned to death, Williams has renounced his gang past, penned children's books, been the subject of a cable TV movie called "Redemption" starring Jamie Foxx and was nominated in 2000 for a Nobel Peace Prize by Swiss Parliament member Mario Fehr for the anti-gang work he has done from his 9-by-4-foot cell.

Calls for clemency have been mounting from religious and community leaders and celebrities such as Foxx, the rapper Snoop Dogg, actor Mike Farrell and activist Bianca Jagger.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President Bruce Gordon, also supports clemency, calling Williams "our secret weapon to help young African-Americans avoid gangs."

"We want to save his life so he can save the lives of others," Gordon said.

Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton and others have questioned Williams' worth in dissuading youths from gang activity.

"Half of them don't know who the hell he is," Bratton told Fox11. "Others don't believe that he should be anointed as a leader of the Crips because they're still gang banging."

City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo told San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders that he sees Williams' legacy as one of "death and violence."

"No matter how he tries to distance himself from violent gangs, he helped create them," Delgadillo said.