Clarence Ray Allen

On January 13, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to grant Allen clemency, stating that "his conduct did not result from youth or inexperience, but instead resulted from the hardened and calculating decisions of a mature man." Schwarzenegger also cited a poem in which Allen glorified his actions, where Allen wrote, "We rob and steal and for those who squeal are usually found dying or dead."

On January 15, 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Allen's claim that executing an aged or infirm person was cruel and unusual punishment, observing that his mental acuity was unimpaired and that he had been fifty years of age when he arranged the murders from prison. Judge Kim Wardlaw writing for the panel of judges Susan Graber, Richard Clifton, and herself:

Allen was executed by lethal injection on January 17, 2006, the day after his 76th birthday, at California's San Quentin State Prison. He became the second-oldest inmate to be executed in the United States since 1976 (John B. Nixon of Mississippi was executed in 2005 at age 77). He was the most recently executed inmate in California as of March 2019 when the imposition of the death penalty was suspended in the state by Governor Gavin Newsom.

In 2005, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Allen's trial counsel had been inadequate, and the evidence against him was largely the testimony of Allen's several accomplices, who painted him as the mastermind who forced them by threats and scare tactics to commit robberies and murders. However the court denied rehearing in Allen's case. In her opinion for the panel, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw concluded:

Schletewitz confronted Roger Allen and informed him that he had been told of the crime by Kitts. Roger Allen told his father, Clarence, who said that Schletewitz and Kitts would have to be "dealt with." He enlisted three employees of his security firm, Charles Jones, Carl Mayfield and Eugene "Lee" Furrow. According to an opinion filed on May 6, 2004, in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:

In 1987, the California Supreme Court affirmed Allen's death sentence. Associate Justice Joseph Grodin's opinion referred to Allen's crimes as "sordid events" with an "extraordinarily massive amount" of aggravating evidence. In a dissenting opinion, California Supreme Court Justice Broussard stated that the prosecutor influenced the jury by telling them that "if you conclude that aggravating evidence outweighs the mitigating evidence, you shall return a death sentence," while the law does not mandate a death sentence in such a situation. According to Justice Broussard, this led to a lack of freedom for the jury to make a "normative decision."

In 1983, Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old neighbor were all murdered in an attack in Chino Hills. Clarence Allen previously had a disagreement with the family over a horse he had purchased from them. Kevin Cooper was convicted of the murders, but a girlfriend of Eugene "Lee" Furrow, convicted of murder in the Kitts case and on parole at the time of the attacks, claimed Furrow had been the killer. Furrow denied involvement and provided a DNA sample In 2018, outgoing California Governor Brown ordered new DNA testing in the Cooper case. Results from DNA testing were still pending as of 2020.

As special circumstances making Allen eligible for the death penalty, the jury also found that Allen had previously been convicted of murder, had committed multiple murders, and had murdered witnesses in retaliation for their prior testimony and to prevent future testimony. During a seven-day penalty phase, the Attorney General introduced evidence of Allen's career orchestrating violent robberies in the Central Valley, including ten violent crimes and six prior felony convictions. Allen was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances and was received onto California’s death row at San Quentin State Prison on December 2, 1982.

A jury convicted Hamilton of three counts of murder, one count of attempted robbery and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. As special circumstances making Hamilton eligible for the death penalty, the jury found that Hamilton had committed murder-robbery, and multiple murders predicated on the killing of other victims. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of death, and the Contra Costa County Superior Court sentenced Hamilton on March 2, 1981.

While in the Fresno County Jail on June 27, 1981, Allen called a “death penalty” vote for an inmate and directed an attack in which inmates scalded the target inmate with two gallons of hot water, tied him to the cell bars and beat him, shot him with a zip gun, a type of improvised firearm, and threw razor blades and excrement at him.

On September 5, 1980, Hamilton and his girlfriend, Connie Barbo, went to Fran's Market while Bryon Schletewitz, who testified against Allen, was working. There, Hamilton murdered Schletewitz and fellow employees Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18, with a sawed-off shotgun and wounded two other people, Joe Rios and Jack Abbott.

In 1980, the California Attorney General filed charges against Allen and prosecuted the trial in Glenn County, California, due to a change of venue. The trial took place in 1982 and lasted 23 days, and 58 witnesses were called to testify. Ultimately, the jury convicted Allen of triple murder and conspiracy to murder eight witnesses.

In 1974, Allen plotted the burglary of Fran's Market, a Fresno-area supermarket owned by Ray and Fran Schletewitz, whom Allen had known for years. The plot involved his son, Roger Allen, as well as Ed Savala, Carl Mayfield, and Charles Jones. Mayfield and Jones worked for Allen in his security guard business as well as part of a burglary enterprise allegedly operated by Allen.

Clarence Ray Allen (January 16, 1930 – January 17, 2006) was an American criminal who was executed in 2006 at the age of 76 by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison in California for the murders of three people. Allen was the second-oldest inmate at the time to be executed in the United States since 1976.

Clarence Ray Allen was born in 1930 in Blair in southwest Oklahoma. He claimed to be of Choctaw heritage.