VATICAN CITY. VATICAN DEPLORES EXECUTION OF US GANG LEADER

the Vatican said there was no room for the death sentence in the modern world after the execution in a US jail of former Los Angeles gang leader Stanley Williams.
"Society today has all the means to avoid the death penalty," Cardinal Raffaele Martino, president of the Vatican's Justice and Peace Council, told Italy's Rai Uno television station.
"The death penalty must be pushed aside because it no longer presents any alternative."
Williams, 51, had been convicted of four murders but became an anti-violence crusader on death row.
He was killed by lethal injection at San Quentin jail after California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected his last appeal for clemency. More than 2,000 people -- including rights activist Jesse Jackson and singer Joan Baez -- gathered outside the prison to protest against the death penalty.