Execution ordered for Crips cofounder

''This case has taken over 24 years to get to this point," Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders said. ''That is a long delay in itself and I would hate to add to that delay."

Williams, 51, and a high school friend started the Crips street gang in Los Angeles in 1971.

Williams was sentenced to death in 1981 for fatally shooting Albert Owens, a convenience store worker, in 1979. He also was convicted of killing two motel owners and their daughter during a robbery that same year.

Williams maintains he is innocent, and supporters cite his renunciation of his past and his efforts to curtail gang violence, including a series of children's books he co-wrote in prison.

Supporters have nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel in literature, and a cable TV movie of his life last year starred Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx.

Dozens of death penalty opponents demonstrated outside the courtroom. Among them was actor Mike Farrell, who said the proceedings failed to consider ''his value, his change, his transformation."