Lawyers for Clarence Ray Allen, who was sick, blind and wheelchair-bound, had pleaded for his life due to his advanced years and health, but were rejected.
Allen was executed in San Quentin Prison near San Francisco and pronounced dead at 12.38pm local time (7.38pm AEDT), according to authorities.
His final appeal was turned down on Friday when Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to spare his life.
Allen has spent 23 years on death row after being convicted in 1982 of ordering the 1980 killings of three people from his prison cell in order to silence witnesses in another killing.
He had initially been jailed for life for having his teenage son's 17-year-old girlfriend murdered to prevent her telling police of a burglary he committed.
He was California's oldest death row inmate and is the second oldest prisoner to be put to death in the United States since a US moratorium on the death penalty ended in 1976.
The execution comes just a month after the highly controversial execution of former gang founder, convicted killer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Tookie Williams, which also took place at San Quentin.
"Allen deserves capital punishment because he was already serving a life sentence for murder when he masterminded the murders of three innocent young people and conspired to attack the heart of our criminal justice system," said state prosecutor Ward Campbell.
With a rapidly ageing prison population in the US, Allen is unlikely to be the last elderly person put to death.
In California alone a third of inmates on death row are over 50, and five are in their 70s.