Orange Man’s Death Penalty Upheld : Ruling: State Supreme Court rejects appeal by Rodney Gene Beeler, a burglar who killed a homeowner in 1985.

The state Supreme Court on Monday upheld the death penalty of an Orange construction worker who killed a man during a burglary, rejecting a defense claim that a juror should have been excused because his father died.

In a 5-2 ruling, the court upheld the death sentence of Rodney Gene Beeler, 42, in the December, 1985, murder of Anthony Stevenson in Stevenson’s home in Orange.

The circumstances of the case, the court found, “tell a story of a killer who entered the home of an innocent stranger and burglarized it. The resident inadvertently returned home, interrupted the crime, and after struggling was shot in the back. The killer left the victim to die.”

A jury in 1988 took less than two hours to find Beeler guilty of murder. The same jury took less than two days to recommend the death penalty.

Beeler’s lawyer for the appeals argued that Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald erred when he allowed a juror to continue deliberating in the trial’s penalty phase after being informed that his father had died the night before.

According to the ruling, Fitzgerald met in chambers with the juror and asked if he could continue to deliberate before leaving town for his father’s funeral. Both defense and prosecution attorneys were tied up in another trial and did not attend the session with the judge.

The juror said he thought that he could continue deliberating, and the judge told him to return to the jury room until the noon break, after which Fitzgerald said he would excuse the jury for six days, until the juror could return.

While the jury was deliberating, both attorneys returned to the court, and Beeler’s lawyer immediately asked that the juror be dismissed. Fitzgerald refused.

Within an hour, the jury returned with its recommendation of death. At that time, the jury foreman said that the death of the other juror’s father had not pressured the jurors into their verdict.

Justice Joyce Kennard, joined by Justice Stanley Mosk, dissented from the majority and wrote that Fitzgerald had created an unacceptable risk of a hurried, unreliable verdict.

“Courts have long recognized the human reality that the death of an immediate family member can have a profound effect on jurors and can disrupt the calm, dispassionate and focused deliberation they must bring to bear on their sworn task,” Kennard said.