BREAKING: Supreme Court turns down Tookie appeal

SACRAMENTO, California (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to stay the execution of convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams, clearing the way for him to die by injection shortly after midnight.

The high court was the former gang leader's last chance to escape execution following a denial of clemency from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier Monday and an appellate court panel rejected a request to stay his execution.

Williams, who co-founded the Crips street gang, is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday (3:01 a.m. ET) at San Quentin State Prison, near San Francisco.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who met with Williams earlier in the day, criticized Schwarzenegger for deciding not to spare Williams.

Jackson said Williams, who was convicted of killing four people in two 1979 robberies in Los Angeles, had earned clemency and that Schwarzenegger's decision was about "making politicians look tough, but that does not make it right."

Schwarzenegger announced his decision not to commute Williams' sentence to life in prison without parole shortly after a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, rejected an affidavit from the convict's lawyers that suggested someone framed the onetime Los Angeles gang leader.