California Executes Confessed Murderer

Last-minute court appeals rejected and clemency vigorously denied by the governor, Donald Beardslee was executed early this morning, 24 years after he confessed to the slayings of two Bay Area women.

As about 300 opponents of the death penalty held a vigil outside the prison, Beardslee, 61, was strapped to a gurney and injected with a fatal cocktail of drugs.

In an extraordinarily detailed statement Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said: “Nothing in his petition or the record of his case convinces me that he did not understand the gravity of his actions or that these heinous murders were wrong.”

Shortly after the governor’s rejection, the U.S. Supreme Court without comment denied Beardslee’s application for a stay. The decisions cleared the way for Beardslee’s execution at 12:01 this morning, the state’s 11th execution since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978 and the first under the Schwarzenegger administration.

Beardslee refused a special final meal and had regular prison fare of chili macaroni, salad and cake.

Among those gathered to witness the execution on San Quentin’s death row were four family members of Patty Geddling, 23, and Stacey Benjamin, 19, whom Beardslee admitted killing and dumping in secluded spots after a dispute over a $185 drug deal in Redwood City, Calif.

At a state clemency hearing in Sacramento on Friday, defense attorneys asked Schwarzenegger for mercy in the case, saying that Beardslee suffered from previously undetected brain damage that caused him to commit the two 1981 murders as well as the fatal stabbing of a Missouri woman in 1969 for which he served seven years in prison.

Hoping that Schwarzenegger would take a cue from the late Ronald Reagan, the last California governor to grant clemency to a condemned man, the attorneys asked that Beardslee be allowed to undergo a sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging brain scan not used during his trial. In a 1967 case, Reagan commuted the death sentence of a brain-damaged convicted killer because the latest scientific test, the 16-channel encephalograph, had not been available at the time of trial.

But Schwarzenegger rejected the brain damage theory, noting that Beardslee functions at a very high level, earning “A’s, Bs and Cs when he attended the College of San Mateo while he was on parole for the Missouri murder.”

After spending the weekend reviewing the case and the sealed recommendation of the state Board of Prison Terms, Schwarzenegger denied clemency for Beardslee, just as he did last year in the only other death case he has faced since taking office.

Last February, Schwarzenegger ignored appeals from a prominent chorus of American and international voices -- including some in the movie business -- and rejected clemency for escaped convict Kevin Cooper. Cooper was sentenced to death for the 1983 hacking deaths of three Chino Hills family members and a neighborhood friend during his flight from prison.

Cooper was later spared from execution by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which sent the case back to lower courts to consider new DNA tests.

Because of the relative leniency he has demonstrated in parole cases -- particularly compared with his Democratic predecessor Gray Davis -- Schwarzenegger’s early dealings in capital cases are being watched closely by the state’s prosecutors and defense lawyers.

In interviews, Schwarzenegger said he believes in the death penalty as “a necessary and effective deterrent to capital crimes.” However, Legal Affairs Secretary Peter Siggins said in a February interview that the governor has indicated he would grant clemency if the right case came along.

“He’s certainly indicated that in the right case he’d be willing to entertain” clemency, said Siggins, who added: “I can tell you the governor is a supporter of the death penalty and believes it’s an appropriate form of punishment.”

Since taking office in November 2003, Schwarzenegger has granted three pardons and issued the first commutation of a prison term by a California governor since Jerry Brown.

California leads the nation with 640 inmates on death row, but ranks 18th in executions performed since 1976. Texas ranks first in executions with 337, and second in inmates on death row, with 455 sentenced to death.

Because of the complicated appeals process, condemned California prisoners wait an average of more than 20 years between the date of sentencing and execution. In fact, most inmates on the state’s death row die of natural causes. Next in line for execution after Beardslee is Blufford Hayes Jr., whose 1980 death sentence is under appeal.

In the nearly quarter-century that he waited in San Mateo County Jail and on San Quentin’s death row, Beardslee is reported to have become a model prisoner. According to testimony read at Friday’s clemency hearing, he even assisted corrections officials on prison security.

Former San Quentin Warden Daniel Vasquez described Beardslee as a rare inmate with no discipline record. “Killing him would be a shame,” Vasquez said.

But Schwarzenegger was not swayed by the good behavior argument. “I expect no less,” he said.

The last-minute call for mercy was also countered by emotional testimony from the families of the two Bay Area women, including Geddling’s grown children.

“I don’t know what problem [Beardslee] has with women. He seems to like to kill them,” said Tom Amundson, Benjamin’s older stepbrother.

In 1969, when he was 26, Beardslee killed a 52-year-old woman he met in a St. Louis bar, stabbing her in the throat with a knife and leaving her in a bathtub to bleed to death. After serving seven years of an 18-year sentence in that killing, the former Air Force mechanic moved to California to be near his mother.

While on parole, Beardslee got a job as a machinist for Hewlett-Packard, where he got consistently good job evaluations.

In 1981, Beardslee picked up a hitchhiker, Rickie Soria, a drug addict and prostitute. Moving in with Beardslee, Soria introduced him to her friends.

One of them, 19-year-old Bill Forrester, claimed that he had been ripped off in a $185 drug deal involving Geddling and Benjamin. Frank Rutherford, a drug dealer portrayed as the group’s ringleader, devised a scheme to entice Geddling and Benjamin to Beardslee’s apartment on April 24, 1981. The day before, Beardslee sent Soria to buy duct tape to tie the women’s hands when they arrived.

After Rutherford accidentally wounded Geddling, Beardslee, Soria and Forrester drove her to a remote site in San Mateo County, where Beardslee shot the young mother twice in the head with a sawed-off shotgun.

The next day, Beardslee, Soria and Rutherford, who had remained with Benjamin, used cocaine as they drove the Pacifica native 100 miles to a secluded area in Lake County, north of San Francisco. After the two men failed to strangle Benjamin with a wire garrote, Beardslee slit her throat with Rutherford’s knife. Before leaving the body, the two men pulled down Benjamin’s pants to make it appear that she had been raped.

Police tracked down Beardslee using a phone number found at one of the crime scenes. As he had in St. Louis, Beardslee quickly confessed to the crimes and was the lead witness in the trials. Rutherford, who died in prison two years ago, and Soria were given long prison terms, and Forrester was acquitted.

Tried last, Beardslee was convicted and, after extensive jury deliberations, sentenced to die in San Quentin’s gas chamber. The method of execution in California was later changed to death by lethal injection.

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California executions

Donald Beardslee was the 11th murderer to be executed by the state since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978. The 10 who preceded him:

Time spent Year Executed Crime on death row

1992 Robert Alton Harris 2 murders during 13 years, 1 month kidnapping, robbery

1993 David Edwin Mason 4 murders during 9 years, 7 months robbery

1996 William George Bonin 14 murders as 13 years, 1 month ÒFreeway KillerÓ

Keith Daniel Williams 3 murders 17 years

1998 Thomas M. Thompson Murder during rape 14 years, 1 month

1999 Jaturun Siripongs 2 murders during 15 years, 9 months robbery

Manuel Babbitt Murder during rape, 16 yrs, 10 months robbery

2000 Darrell Keith Rich 4 murders during rapes 19 years, 1 month

2001 Robert Lee Massie Murder during robbery 21 yrs, 10 months

2002 Stephen Wayne Anderson Murder during burglary 20 years, 6 months

Source: California Department of Corrections

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Death penalty

Twenty states with the most executions since 1976:

State Total 2004 2005

Texas 337 23 1 Virginia 94 5 Oklahoma 75 6 Missouri 61 Florida 59 2 Georgia 36 2 N. Carolina 34 4 S. Carolina 32 4 Alabama 30 2 Louisiana 27 Arkansas 26 1 Arizona 22 Ohio 15 7 Delaware 13 Illinois 12 Indiana 11 Nevada 11 2 California 11 1 Mississippi 6 Utah 6

Source: Death Penalty Information Center