76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen. (AP Photo)

    BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The US Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday to stay the execution of California's oldest condemned prisoner, 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen, about 10 hours before his scheduled execution.

    Allen, who is legally blind, uses a wheelchair and suffers from chronic heart disease and diabetes. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection early on Tuesday and would be the second-oldest man executed in the United States in recent decades.

    He raised two claims never before endorsed by the high court -- that executing a frail old man would violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that the 23 years he spent on death row were unconstitutionally cruel as well.

     However, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Friday that he would not spare Allen's life. "His conduct did not result from youth or inexperience, but instead resulted from the hardened and calculating decisions of a mature man." he said in a statement denying clemency to Allen.

The death chamber seen from the witness area at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. (AP photo)

    Allen went to prison for having his teenage son's 17-year-old girlfriend murdered for fear she would tell police about a grocery-store burglary. While behind bars, he tried to have witnesses in the case wiped out, prosecutors said.

    He was sentenced to death in 1982 for hiring a hit man who killed a witness and two bystanders.

    Last month in Mississippi, John B. Nixon, 77, became the oldest person executed in the United States since capital punishment resumed in 1977. He did not pursue an appeal based on his age. Enditem

    (Agencies)