Execution Date Set for 1980 Killing
An execution date was set Wednesday for a San Bernardino County drifter who ate macaroni while his victim bled to death.
Stephen Wayne Anderson has exhausted his appeals and was given a Jan. 29 execution date by San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Bob Krug. Anderson, 48, was convicted of killing 81-year-old Elizabeth Lyman. He shot the former piano teacher in the face before burglarizing her Bloomington home on Memorial Day in 1980.
He watched television in her living room and ate macaroni he had fixed as she bled to death.
In a taped confession, Anderson said he shot Lyman because she surprised him after he broke into her house looking for money.
He was a convict who had escaped from a Utah prison, where he had been serving a sentence for burglary.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court both rejected Anderson’s final appeals last month.
He argued that he received ineffective legal assistance from Donald Ames during his trial. Ames died last year. A federal appeals court has converted two death sentences to life terms because of Ames’ poor work in those cases, but upheld Anderson’s sentence.
Anderson can choose either lethal injection or the gas chamber at San Quentin state prison.
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