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Recent Articles About Death Row's Donald Beardslee
12/17: Murderer scheduled to die Jan. 19
Federal appeals court grants one last hearing
Federal appeals court grants one last hearing
SAN MATEO COUNTY
Murderer scheduled to die Jan. 19
Federal appeals court grants one last hearing
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, December 17, 2004
A San Mateo County judge who found on Thursday morning that a condemned killer had exhausted all of his appeals scheduled the man to die by lethal injection next month. By afternoon, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco intervened and granted the inmate a new appeal.
Donald Beardslee, 61, remains scheduled to die Jan. 19. He has been on California's Death Row for 20 years, after his conviction for murdering two young women in 1981 in San Mateo County in what prosecutors said was a drug- related murder.
On Thursday morning, a San Mateo County judge set the Jan. 19 execution, saying his appeal rights appeared to have been exhausted.
"Mr. Beardslee's crimes were vicious, heinous and callous," Judge Mark Forcum said. "I think the victim's families deserve closure after 23 years."
But in the afternoon, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted Beardslee's lawyers one last time to challenge his death sentence, and set a hearing date for later this month.
The court did not issue a stay of execution, however, saying it wanted legal arguments completed by Dec. 22.
At the time of the killings of Patty Geddling, 23, and Stacie Benjamin, 19, Beardslee was on parole for a murder in Missouri.
Beardslee's lawyers expressed relief at the federal court's action, while San Mateo County prosecutors were disheartened.
"It's a victory, because it preserved an appeal," said Michael Laurence, the executive director of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center who was appointed in October to represent Beardslee in court cases and clemency issues.
"It undermines the state's claim that they are entitled to execute Mr. Beardslee."
Assistant District Attorney Martin Murray said the appeals should be over by now.
"It just is not fair to the families to allow them to believe there is going to be closure and for this stuff to happen," Murray said. "The court needs to know the need for finality of their decisions."
Beardslee's legal battles have lasted two decades, and he had lost all his state appeals and appeared to have lost all his federal appeals when the Ninth Circuit issued its ruling late Thursday.
At issue now is whether Beardslee should be able to challenge the death penalty based on earlier court determinations that invalidated three out of the four special circumstances alleged against him. Special circumstances are the qualifying facts that could merit the death penalty.
The special circumstances that had been tossed out include one count of multiple murder -- as the same allegation was found to be redundant for having been filed twice, once for each victim, and two counts of murdering a witness.
The courts have since found that witness murders have to involve victims slated to appear in court to testify, and the facts in the Beardslee case did not meet the courts' definition.
The defense argues that the jury may have been swayed by the sheer volume of special circumstances -- most now invalidated -- in coming to a punishment of death.
The state court rejected the multiple-charge argument as a harmless error. At one point, the Ninth Circuit had refused to hear that issue. Then, in July, the Ninth Circuit allowed a defendant facing death a new trial on the death sentence based on identical circumstances. The Ninth Circuit now must decide whether Beardslee should be able to appeal in light of the July ruling.
Besides the favorable court ruling, the defense has cited circumstances they say make the death penalty in this case unjust.
Beardslee suffered a blow on his head when a tree fell on him while he was in the Air Force. The defense said the near-fatal blow caused brain damage, as did a car accident when he was 16.
Laurence said that in the double murder, Beardslee was urged to kill the victims by two co-defendants, who were not sentenced to death.
The death penalty was reinstated in California in 1978, but no executions were carried out until 1992. Since then, 10 inmates have been executed in the state, with the last in January 2002.
This is the third time an execution date has been set for Beardslee.
Murray wondered why it took so long for the courts to consider all the issues.
"I understand the need to thoroughly litigate these cases," he said. "But we can build rocket ships and send a man to the moon in less than 22 years. I don't think it takes that long to read a transcript."
Murray said that on Thursday he met Geddling's daughter, who was 4 years old when her mother was slain, and she gave him a letter to send to the governor, who will consider clemency.
"She thinks it's time for closure."
E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken [at] sfchronicle.com.
Page B - 4
Murderer scheduled to die Jan. 19
Federal appeals court grants one last hearing
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, December 17, 2004
A San Mateo County judge who found on Thursday morning that a condemned killer had exhausted all of his appeals scheduled the man to die by lethal injection next month. By afternoon, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco intervened and granted the inmate a new appeal.
Donald Beardslee, 61, remains scheduled to die Jan. 19. He has been on California's Death Row for 20 years, after his conviction for murdering two young women in 1981 in San Mateo County in what prosecutors said was a drug- related murder.
On Thursday morning, a San Mateo County judge set the Jan. 19 execution, saying his appeal rights appeared to have been exhausted.
"Mr. Beardslee's crimes were vicious, heinous and callous," Judge Mark Forcum said. "I think the victim's families deserve closure after 23 years."
But in the afternoon, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted Beardslee's lawyers one last time to challenge his death sentence, and set a hearing date for later this month.
The court did not issue a stay of execution, however, saying it wanted legal arguments completed by Dec. 22.
At the time of the killings of Patty Geddling, 23, and Stacie Benjamin, 19, Beardslee was on parole for a murder in Missouri.
Beardslee's lawyers expressed relief at the federal court's action, while San Mateo County prosecutors were disheartened.
"It's a victory, because it preserved an appeal," said Michael Laurence, the executive director of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center who was appointed in October to represent Beardslee in court cases and clemency issues.
"It undermines the state's claim that they are entitled to execute Mr. Beardslee."
Assistant District Attorney Martin Murray said the appeals should be over by now.
"It just is not fair to the families to allow them to believe there is going to be closure and for this stuff to happen," Murray said. "The court needs to know the need for finality of their decisions."
Beardslee's legal battles have lasted two decades, and he had lost all his state appeals and appeared to have lost all his federal appeals when the Ninth Circuit issued its ruling late Thursday.
At issue now is whether Beardslee should be able to challenge the death penalty based on earlier court determinations that invalidated three out of the four special circumstances alleged against him. Special circumstances are the qualifying facts that could merit the death penalty.
The special circumstances that had been tossed out include one count of multiple murder -- as the same allegation was found to be redundant for having been filed twice, once for each victim, and two counts of murdering a witness.
The courts have since found that witness murders have to involve victims slated to appear in court to testify, and the facts in the Beardslee case did not meet the courts' definition.
The defense argues that the jury may have been swayed by the sheer volume of special circumstances -- most now invalidated -- in coming to a punishment of death.
The state court rejected the multiple-charge argument as a harmless error. At one point, the Ninth Circuit had refused to hear that issue. Then, in July, the Ninth Circuit allowed a defendant facing death a new trial on the death sentence based on identical circumstances. The Ninth Circuit now must decide whether Beardslee should be able to appeal in light of the July ruling.
Besides the favorable court ruling, the defense has cited circumstances they say make the death penalty in this case unjust.
Beardslee suffered a blow on his head when a tree fell on him while he was in the Air Force. The defense said the near-fatal blow caused brain damage, as did a car accident when he was 16.
Laurence said that in the double murder, Beardslee was urged to kill the victims by two co-defendants, who were not sentenced to death.
The death penalty was reinstated in California in 1978, but no executions were carried out until 1992. Since then, 10 inmates have been executed in the state, with the last in January 2002.
This is the third time an execution date has been set for Beardslee.
Murray wondered why it took so long for the courts to consider all the issues.
"I understand the need to thoroughly litigate these cases," he said. "But we can build rocket ships and send a man to the moon in less than 22 years. I don't think it takes that long to read a transcript."
Murray said that on Thursday he met Geddling's daughter, who was 4 years old when her mother was slain, and she gave him a letter to send to the governor, who will consider clemency.
"She thinks it's time for closure."
E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken [at] sfchronicle.com.
Page B - 4
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Death penalty upheld for '81 murder of 2 young women
Redwood City killer's execution date set for Jan. 19
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Donald Beardslee, now 61, killed the women, 19 and 23 yea...
A federal appeals court late Wednesday upheld the death sentence of Donald Beardslee for murdering two young women in San Mateo County in 1981, moving him one step closer to execution on Jan. 19.
A day after hearing arguments on a last-ditch appeal by Beardslee's attorneys, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that errors in his penalty trial did not affect the jury's verdict.
Beardslee can still ask the full appeals court for a rehearing and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has previously refused to review his case. He can also ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency.
If those efforts fail, he will become the 11th person put to death in California since 1992, when the state resumed executions after a 25-year halt, and the first since January 2002.
Beardslee, now 61, was convicted of murdering Stacy Benjamin, 19, and her friend Patty Geddling, 23, over a drug debt in April 1981. Prosecutors said Beardslee had shot Geddling and slashed Benjamin's throat after another man had shot Benjamin in Beardslee's Redwood City apartment. Beardslee was on parole at the time for a 1969 murder in Missouri.
State and federal courts upheld his death sentence, but the appeals court granted him a new hearing Dec. 16 based on its ruling in July that granted a new penalty trial to a Kern County man in a similar case.
In the July ruling, the court said Ronald Sanders' death verdict might have been affected by the jury's consideration of two invalid "special circumstances,'' or factors that made the crime punishable by death.
Three of the four special circumstances found by the jury in Beardslee's case -- two counts of murdering a witness, and one of two multiple-murder counts -- were overturned by the state Supreme Court in 1991.
His attorneys argued that the jury's improper consideration of those factors might have been decisive, noting that the initial jury vote was 10-2 for a life sentence. But the appeals court disagreed.
The penalty phase would have been substantially the same if the invalid special circumstances had been excluded, said Judge Sidney Thomas in the 3-0 ruling. "All of the gruesome details of the crime would have been admitted'' along with Beardslee's past murder conviction, evidence of planning and his lack of remorse, Thomas said.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko [at] sfchronicle.com.
Page B - 2
Bay City News
Thursday, December 30, 2004
A Redwood City man who is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 19 asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today to exercise clemency and commute his sentence to life in prison without parole.
The clemency petition filed by lawyers for Donald Beardslee, 61, argues that exceptional circumstances, including alleged lifelong brain damage in Beardslee, "warrant the exercise of mercy."
Beardslee is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison on Jan. 19 for the 1981 murder of Patty Geddling, 23.
He was convicted by a jury in San Mateo County Superior Court in 1983 of murdering both Geddling and her roommate, Stacey Benjamin, 19. A separate penalty jury in 1984 imposed a death penalty for Geddling's murder and a sentence of life in prison without parole for the slaying of Benjamin.
Beardslee has previously lost a series of state and federal appeals over the past two decades.
On Wednesday, he lost a key ruling in a last-minute appeal when a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down his claim that he should be given a new penalty trial.
That ruling can still be appealed to an expanded appeals panel or to the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, the circuit court set Jan. 5 as the deadline for Beardslee to file an appeal for review by an expanded panel.
The 48-page clemency petition asks the governor to look outside of the court proceedings and consider information that was not fully known at the time of Beardslee's trial.
The petition contends that the penalty jury was not aware Beardslee had suffered from "severe brain damage that impaired his functioning since birth."
It argues that the brain damage accounts for Beardslee's "puzzling behavior" during the murders, in which Beardslee did not know the victims and had nothing to do with a plot hatched by three other men to kill the two women, according to the petition.
The filing also argues that Beardslee played a smaller role in the killings than the other men, who received lesser sentences, and that he may even not have fired the shot that killed Geddling.
Beardslee's lawyers also argue in the petition that he has been a model prisoner and would not pose a danger if sentenced to life in prison without parole.
"A commutation of Mr. Beardslee's death sentence is not only a merciful result, it also is a just result," the petition says.
J.P. Tremblay, the assistant secretary for external affairs of the California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, said today that state prosecutors have nine days to respond to the petition.
Tremblay said he expects the state Board of Prison Terms to hold a clemency hearing on approximately Jan. 12.
The board will then make a recommendation to the governor on whether to grant clemency, he said.
Copyright 2004 by Bay City News, Inc. Replication, republication or retransmission without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, December 30, 2004
(12-30) 21:51 PST SACRAMENTO (AP) --
California prison authorities are proceeding with plans to carry out the state's first execution in three years, after a federal court rejected an appeal from a confessed killer scheduled to die next month.
Though additional appeals are likely, "we're going to move forward until we're told otherwise," Department of Corrections spokeswoman Margot Bach said Thursday.
Donald Beardslee, 61, is set to die Jan. 19 at San Quentin State Prison for killing two San Francisco Bay area women in 1981 in retaliation for a soured drug deal.
Beardslee's lawyers asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday to commute his sentence based on his good behavior in prison, recent tests that showed he has severe brain damage and their belief that he did not play as key a role in the murders as a co-defendant who was not sentenced to death.
"A commutation of Mr. Beardslee's death sentence is not only a merciful result, it is the just result," Beardslee's lawyers wrote in a 48-page clemency petition.
Beardslee would be the 11th person to be executed since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978, and the first since Stephen Wayne Anderson was put to death in January 2002 for the 1980 murder of an 81-year-old woman.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday unanimously denied an appeal by Beardslee based on an improper jury instruction, ruling jurors were not improperly swayed to favor the death penalty.
Defense attorney Michael Laurence had sought a new penalty hearing for Beardslee for the 1981 murder of Patty Geddling in San Mateo County. He unsuccessfully argued that without the improper instruction, jurors might have decided to sentence Beardslee to life in prison without parole.
While Beardslee was convicted of two slayings, jurors opted for the death penalty in just one while settling on a life sentence for the second murder. That shows "this error did not have a substantial and injurious effect on the verdict," concluded Judge Sidney R. Thomas in writing the panel's decision.
Beardslee was informed Dec. 17 that his execution date had been set. He will undergo a psychiatric evaluation and be regularly observed to make sure he is sane, groomed, clean, and taking care of himself, Bach said: "We can't put someone to death who's incompetent."
He is now allowed to have visitors more often than is permitted for most inmates. Meanwhile, the execution team is being trained to administer the lethal injection. Prosecutors and victims' relatives are being contacted to see if they wish to serve as witnesses to the execution. News media coverage is being coordinated.
On Jan. 13, he will be moved to a cell closer to the execution chamber. He'll be asked what he wishes for a last meal. Spiritual advisers will be permitted to visit if he wants them.
Yet, as the system moves ahead with its finely choreographed preparations, Beardslee can pursue additional appeals in addition to the clemency petition, any of which can halt or delay the execution.
Beardslee's case already has reached the U.S. Supreme Court once and been rejected. The California Supreme Court in 1991 tossed out one of the special circumstances that qualified Beardslee for execution, but affirmed the death sentence on the ground he committed multiple murders.
The other man involved in the slayings, Frank Rutherford, is serving a life sentence, but Beardslee was convicted of doing the actual killings.
Rutherford and Beardslee lured Geddling and Stacey Benjamin to Beardslee's apartment in Redwood City to retaliate for not getting illicit drugs they felt they were due. Rutherford shot Geddling in the shoulder at the apartment, but the men then took her to a roadside along Highway 1 and shot her several more times. Benjamin was strangled and her throat slit the same day.
Beardslee's lawyers told jurors he didn't deserve the death penalty because he confessed to the police, was mentally impaired and had a disturbed childhood.
The case is Beardslee v. Brown, 01-99007.