SAN FRANCISCO—Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would consider granting clemency to convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams, the Crips gang co-founder who became an anti-gang activist while in prison.

The governor said Friday he would meet Dec. 8 in a private hearing at his Sacramento office with Williams’ lawyers, Los Angeles County prosecutors and others involved.

Schwarzenegger, vested with constitutional authority to grant mercy and commute a death sentence to life without parole, is not legally obligated to hold a public or private hearing, and decides clemency requests on a “case-by-case basis,” said his spokeswoman, Margita Thompson.

Williams, 51, faces death by lethal injection on Dec. 13 for murdering four people in 1979 _ a Whittier convenience store clerk and three people at a Pico Rivera motel less than two weeks later. He denies his guilt, and has also asked the California Supreme Court to reopen his case, alleging shoddy forensics wrongly connected him to three of the murders.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on his petition.

Los Angeles County prosecutors and victims’ relatives have demanded his execution.

Along with asking Schwarzenegger to commute Williams’ death sentence, his lawyers submitted what they said were signatures of 32,000 people supporting his petition for clemency last week. They said Williams, who has been nominated for several Nobel Peace Prizes as an anti-gang activist, could do more for society alive than dead.

Schwarzenegger has rejected the only other two petitions from death row inmates seeking a commutation of a death sentence.

The governor denied a hearing, public or private, altogether last year for Kevin Cooper, whose execution was later stayed by a federal appeals court. In the other petition for clemency this January, after a public hearing, Schwarzenegger declined to spare Donald Beardslee, whom the former warden of San Quentin State Prison urged be kept alive.

Schwarzenegger’s office said it would decide Williams’ clemency request before Dec. 13.

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Editors: David Kravets has been covering state and federal courts for more than a decade.