Clarence Ray Allen had been on Death Row for more than 23 years for ordering three contract killings from his prison cell while he was already serving a life sentence for murder. He is the oldest prisoner to be executed in California, and the second oldest in the entire US since America re-introduced the death penalty in 1976. Last month in Mississippi, John Nixon, 77, became the oldest person executed since the resumption.

Allen's final meal was Kentucky Fried Chicken, a buffalo steak, full-fat milk, black walnut ice cream and sugar-free pecan pie. In addition to being blind, deaf, and wheelchair-bound,  Allen was diabetic and suffered from heart disease.

In his final weeks, death penalty opponents and his lawyers argued that executing him would amount to cruel and unusual punishment because of his age and lengthy list of medical ailments.

"To wheel Mr. Allen, a blind, aged, crippled and enfeebled man, into the execution chamber at San Quentin to be put to death would be a bizarre spectacle that shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of human decency,'' Allen's lawyers said in an appeal last month. They said Allen, if allowed to finish his life in prison, posed no risk of harm to anyone.

The federal appeals court rejected those arguments Sunday. The court said Supreme Court rulings have barred execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded as well as prisoners who were currently insane and unable to understand that they were being executed.

But no US court has found a barrier to executing someone like Allen, who was a mentally sound 50-year-old when he ordered the murders and remains sane today, the appeals court said. "Nothing about his current ailments reduces his culpability and thus they do no lessen the retributive or deterrent purposes of the death penalty,'' the court said.

Schwarzenegger  said in a statement denying clemency to Allen: "His conduct did not result from youth or inexperience, but instead resulted from the hardened and calculating decisions of a mature man."

"Hoka Hey it's a good day to die"

Allen was first convicted of murder for the 1974 killing of his son's girlfriend, Mary Sue Kitts, a witness to a Fresno grocery store burglary by a gang of thieves led by Allen. While serving a life sentence, he was convicted of ordering the 1980 murders of three people at the same grocery store, one of them a witness to the earlier killing.

The gunman in the 1980 killings, Billy Ray Hamilton, was also sentenced to death and is on San Quentin's death row. Prosecutors said Hamilton, a fellow inmate at Allen's prison before his parole, was given a list of eight people who had testified against Allen for the 1974 murder. Another inmate testified that Allen offered Hamilton $25,000 to kill them.

Allen's execution at San Quentin prison north of San Francisco followed the Dec. 13 execution there of Stanley Tookie Williams,  the ex-leader of the Crips gang who had been convicted of four murders in 1979.

About two dozen people gathered outside the prison gates as Allen's execution approached. Jes Richardson, 57, told the Associated Press: "I pay taxes. I vote. It's murder and I feel because I'm a citizen of this state I'm indirectly responsible for that murder."