Donald Beardslee executed

Donald Beardslee executed
Killer put to death at San Quentin

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

photos:
Donald Beardslee as an airman in the 1960s. Anti-death penalty demonstrator Lyle Grosjean, of San Lea... Opponents of the death penalty gather outside of San Quen... Early in his incarceration in California. California Depa... More...
articles:
Donald Beardslee Execution

Beardslee put to death at San Quentin
(01/19)

Demonstrators assail execution
(01/19)

Editorial: Death at midnight
(01/18)

Victims' relatives wait decades for execution
(01/18)

Enigmatic killer down to final days
(01/16)

Family, foes make pleas at hearing
(01/15)

Condemned murderer Donald Beardslee, who killed two young Peninsula women in 1981 while on parole from an earlier murder conviction, was executed by lethal injection early today at San Quentin State Prison.

Prison officials declared Beardslee dead at 12:29 a.m..

Beardslee spent the last hours before his execution talking with his spiritual adviser and members of his legal team. He skipped the traditional last meal and only drank grapefruit juice before his death.

No members of Beardslee's family were present for the execution, and the sole person who attended on his behalf was his attorney, Jeannie Sternberg.

Beardslee, of Redwood City, was convicted of the shotgun killing of Patty Geddling, 23, and the throat-slashing murder of Stacey Benjamin, 19. Prosecutors said the women were killed in revenge for a $185 drug debt claimed by another man.

T. Tom Amundsen, Stacey Benjamin's brother, and two of her cousins, Mark and Bobby Brooke, were present for Beardslee's death. None of Geddling's family members attended. Mary Geddling, who is married to Patty Geddling's son, Ivan, said: "I'm not going to stay up and watch it. ... It's very hard on all of us."

Corrections Department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said Beardslee had not had a visit from relatives in a month, although his brother and sister appeared before a state board last week to argue for clemency.

Beardslee declined to order a last meal and, at 7:42 p.m., refused the dinner provided to other prisoners of chili macaroni, mixed vegetables and green salad, said Todd Slosek, another spokesman for the Corrections Department.

Slosek said Beardslee "seemed to be in good spirits."

"He has been laughing and joking around with his legal team and his spiritual adviser," Slosek said.

Around 6 p.m., prison officials escorted him to the death-watch cell in the prison, where he passed the evening with his spiritual adviser Margaret Harrell. His mood became more somber after the transfer.

"He has gotten a little apprehensive, as anyone would who is facing death," Slosek said.

Beardslee's fate was sealed Tuesday afternoon when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied clemency and the U.S. Supreme Court denied review of his last two appeals -- one challenging the jury instructions at Beardslee's trial, the other claiming flaws in California's procedures for lethal injection.

Later, Schwarzenegger rejected a defense lawyer's request to delay the execution for 120 days so that courts could further examine the lethal injection procedures after a federal appeals panel expressed qualms last week.

In asking Schwarzenegger to commute the sentence to life without parole, Beardslee's lawyers said a new report by a prominent neuropsychologist concluded that the 61-year-old inmate had been brain-damaged since birth. The report said the condition was worsened by two head injuries he suffered as a young man that left him unable to make independent judgments under stress.

But Schwarzenegger said Beardslee's apparent mental impairment did not prevent him from helping to plan the killings, acting purposefully during the crimes and trying to cover them up. The governor cited evidence that Beardslee told an accomplice to buy tape to bind the victims, helped to wipe down a van to remove fingerprints and, along with another man, pulled down one victim's pants to make the crime look like a sexual assault.

"These actions show Beardslee's consciousness of guilt and the nature and consequences of the murders he committed,'' Schwarzenegger wrote. "There is no question in my mind that at the time Beardslee committed the murders he knew what he was doing -- and he knew it was wrong.''

Schwarzenegger also said Beardslee's record as a model prisoner for 20 years and the fact that he was the only participant in the crimes to be sentenced to death did not justify clemency. Beardslee was the only defendant with a previous murder conviction and the only one "who administered the coup de grace to each of the murdered women,'' Schwarzenegger said.

Ten prisoners have been put to death since the state resumed executions in 1992 after a 25-year hiatus. The last was in January 2002, when Stephen Wayne Anderson was executed for murdering a San Bernardino County woman during a 1980 burglary.

California has 639 condemned prisoners, more than any other state. Beardslee confessed to each of his three murders, all committed against women he barely knew.

A native of St. Louis, he had no violent crimes on his record until he killed Laura Griffin, 54, in her apartment in December 1969, the same night the two met at a St. Louis-area bar. She was stabbed, choked and drowned in a bathtub. Beardslee, who described the killing to authorities as senseless and without motive, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

He was paroled in 1977 to the Bay Area, where his mother lived, and settled in Redwood City. He was still on parole, and working as a machinist at Hewlett-Packard, when he murdered Geddling and Benjamin in April 1981.

Witnesses said the two women were lured to Beardslee's apartment by Rickie Soria, a young woman who shared the apartment, in a scheme by a drug dealer named Frank Rutherford to take revenge for an unpaid $185 drug debt claimed by an associate, Bill Forrester.

Rutherford shot Geddling in the shoulder. Beardslee was part of a group that then left with Geddling on the pretext of taking her to a hospital. They drove to a remote area near Pescadero where, according to prosecution testimony, Forrester shot Geddling twice, then gave the gun to Beardslee, who fired the fatal shots.

Beardslee and Soria returned to Redwood City, where Rutherford was holding Benjamin captive, and drove with her to Lake County. There, Rutherford tried to strangle Benjamin with a wire, Beardslee joined in, and then Beardslee got a knife and slit her throat. Linked to the crimes by a phone number on a piece of paper found near Geddling's corpse, Beardslee admitted his role to police, led them to Benjamin's body and testified against the other defendants.

Rutherford was convicted of Benjamin's murder and sentenced to life in prison. He died in prison two years ago. Soria, who was on the scene of both murders, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is still in prison. Forrester, who denied shooting Geddling, was acquitted.

Beardslee was sentenced to death for Geddling's murder and to life without parole for Benjamin's murder. His appeals challenged the prosecution's use of the Missouri murder -- in which police may have questioned him illegally -- to argue for the death penalty; questioned the competence of one of his Redwood City trial lawyers, who read Bon Appetit magazine during part of Beardslee's testimony; and claimed his death sentence was disproportionate to the punishment of others who allegedly orchestrated Geddling's and Benjamin's murders. Over two decades, each claim was rejected by state and federal courts.

His final appeal of his death sentence, denied Tuesday, argued that penalty-phase jurors were prejudiced when the judge told them that Beardslee had been convicted of killing the two women to eliminate them as witnesses. The witness-killing charges eventually were overturned, but courts ruled that they did not influence the death verdict.

In the other appeal rejected by the Supreme Court, Beardslee's attorneys argued that the state's procedures for lethal injection constitute cruel and unusual punishment and violate the condemned man's freedom of speech. If administered improperly, they argued, the chemicals could cause an agonizing death, and Beardslee would be unable to cry out because one of the drugs causes paralysis.

After the early-afternoon court rejection, one of Beardslee's lawyers asked Schwarzenegger for a 120-day reprieve to allow the courts to reach a final resolution on whether the state takes adequate safeguards in administering lethal injections.

The attorney, Steven Lubliner, noted that the federal appeals court that refused to block the execution last week said it was nonetheless troubled by reports of possible problems in past executions and by the state's refusal to explain the need for the paralyzing chemical.

But at 4 p.m., Schwarzenegger denied the reprieve.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko [at] sfchronicle.com.

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