Bonin Clemency Plea in Governor’s Hands

The state Board of Prison Terms gathered behind closed doors Wednesday to weigh a clemency appeal from William G. Bonin, the convicted “freeway killer” who faces a Feb. 23 execution by lethal injection for a brutal murder spree in Southern California that ended in 1980.

The board met in private to consider its recommendation and issue a confidential written report to Gov. Pete Wilson, who is expected to announce a decision on Bonin’s fate next week.

“The governor will be spending a great deal of time during the coming days reviewing material from all parties,” said Sean Walsh, Wilson’s spokesman.

Walsh declined to reveal the board’s recommendation, and panel members--who in recent weeks reviewed reams of written material provided by Bonin’s attorneys, prosecutors and the families of victims--also refused to say what their decision was.

“We are looking at the totality of his record,” said James W. Nielsen, the prison board chairman. “It is a decision one takes with an awesome sense of gravity and a great deal of deliberation.”

Wilson has the power to reduce the death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Bonin has also filed emergency appeals in court in the hope of blocking or delaying the execution.

If those efforts are unsuccessful, Bonin would become only the third man executed in California since its death penalty was reinstated in 1977, and the first to die by lethal injection. The last to die was David Edwin Mason, who was executed in 1993 for killing five people.

Bonin was convicted of sexually assaulting, robbing and strangling 14 boys and young men, aged 12 to 19, and dumping their bodies along freeways and deserted roads in Los Angeles and Orange counties in 1979 and 1980.

Before retiring behind closed doors to consider the case, the Board of Prison Terms heard an emotional letter from the mother of one of Bonin’s victims.

Sandra Miller, whose 15-year-old son was murdered by Bonin, was unable to fly up from her Riverside home because the airport was fogged in. Instead, she faxed a letter to the board, which was read aloud in a hushed hearing room by Bryan Brown, the Orange County deputy district attorney who handled several of the cases against Bonin.

Miller said in the letter that the body of her son, Rusty, was “beyond recognition” when Bonin was done with him. “I had nightmares which I can’t possibly explain and still do,” Miller said.

Her once tightknit family became “totally dysfunctional” after the boy’s murder, Miller said. She turned to alcohol, overate and became suicidal.

“Bonin [has] lived 16 years longer than Rusty got to live his life,” Miller wrote. “Bonin has destroyed more lives than ours. . . . We’ve tried so desperately to rebuild our lives, now please put him to sleep. He has nothing to give this world. He only took the most precious things in our lives--our children.”