Court denies hearing for condemned killer

Execution looms for convicted killer

DAVID KRAVETS

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - To Tom Amundsen, whose younger sister was murdered by Donald Beardslee 24 years ago, watching Beardslee be executed at San Quentin State Prison early Wednesday will symbolize a combination of vengeance, justice and closure.

"I think, what it does, it puts one chapter of this incident closed," Amundsen said about the killing of his sister, Stacey Benjamin. He said Benjamin, who was 19 and living in Pacifica when she was strangled and dumped in remote Lake County hundreds of miles away, had gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd, but had aspirations of becoming a lawyer or real estate broker.

Amundsen took a much harsher tone at Beardslee's clemency hearing Friday, in which Beardslee's lawyers argued he should be spared because he was not mentally competent when he killed Benjamin and her friend, 23-year old Patty Geddling, in 1981.

"Now it's time to say goodbye to Mr. Beardslee. That's what I want, that's what my family wants," he said. He also said he had consulted a priest who told him he could witness the Wednesday morning execution.

Having nearly exhausted an odyssey of appeals, and barring a last-minute grant of clemency or reprieve from 11th-hour legal challenges, Beardslee will die by lethal injection just after midnight Wednesday morning. He'll first receive a sedative, then a paralyzing agent and finally a drug to stop his heart - making him the 11th person executed since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978.

Michael Laurence, one of Beardslee's attorneys, said it would be an injustice to execute Beardslee because his "actions and reactions over the course of the crimes was largely a result of pronounced brain dysfunction and major mental illness."

The fates of Geddling and Benjamin were connected to that of another woman, Paula Griffin, whom Beardslee killed for no reason in Missouri in 1969.

He met Griffin in a bar near his hometown of St. Louis, and they got drunk and he strangled her later that night in her apartment. He confessed and offered no motive for the killing, and had never committed other violent acts. In prison for that crime, authorities diagnosed him as schizophrenic, and suggested he was possibly brain damaged.

Paroled seven years later, the Air Force veteran and machinist moved to California where his mother lived. Eventually he settled in Redwood City, where in his apartment in April 1981 another grisly murder spree began.

According to court records and interviews, weeks before the two murders, Beardslee picked up a hitchhiker, Rickie Soria. Soria was an 18-year-old drug user and prostitute whose friends included Geddling, Benjamin and a drug dealer named Frank Rutherford.

Another friend of Soria's, Bill Forrester, hatched a plot with Soria to retaliate against Geddling and Benjamin, whom he claimed had stiffed him in a drug deal.

Soria lured the two women to Beardslee's apartment for what they thought would be another drug sale. There, Rutherford accidentally shot Geddling in the shoulder and tied up both women.

His attorneys said that Beardslee, because of his mental problems, was an unwitting dupe to the events that would follow. But prosecutors said that Beardslee helped with the plot and sent Soria to get duct tape to bind the victims before they even arrived at his place.

Beardslee, Forrester and Soria took Geddling to a remote area along Highway 1 in San Mateo County, where Beardslee shot her several times. Rutherford and Beardslee later drove Benjamin to a secluded area in Lake County, where they choked her with a garrote and Beardslee slashed her throat.

Beardslee confessed to both crimes and the jury convicted him of murdering both victims. Soria is still behind bars after pleading guilty to second-degree murder; Rutherford died in prison two years ago while serving a life sentence for his role in the crimes. Forrester was acquitted.

Now, all that separates Beardslee from the scheduled execution is the U.S. Supreme Court, where two last-minute appeals are pending, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom Beardslee's attorneys have asked to commute his death sentence to life without parole. Decisions are still pending.

In Friday's hearing, Former San Quentin Warden Daniel Vasquez called for clemency for Beardslee because he had been a model inmate during his 21 years on death row and had contributed to the safety of guards and other prisoners.

"Donald Beardslee is the rare inmate," Vasquez said. "Killing him would be a shame."

Beardslee's lawyers and family said a recent evaluation found his brain was damaged from birth and from a series of accidents early in his life, which left him unable to think clearly.

"I do not believe that justice would be served by his execution with the knowledge of new details and understanding of how my brother was also a victim and used because of his limited mental capabilities," Beardslee's sister, Carol Miller, said during the Friday clemency hearing.

Prosecutors have dismissed the notion that Beardslee was a passive accomplice in the murders or that he was afflicted by brain damage. San Mateo County Assistant District Attorney Martin Murray said that Beardslee had normal intelligence, held decent manufacturing jobs and was at one time the president of a chapter of a national public speaking group, the Toastmaster's Club.

"Contrary to the assertions of his lawyers, Beardslee was an active participant at every stage of the initial capture and ultimate murder of both victims," Murray said.

Sandra Curry, the daughter of Beardslee's Missouri victim, Paula Griffin, said Schwarzenegger must not commute Beardslee's sentence.

"He did not show mercy to my mother or those two young women," she said. "Why should he receive mercy now?"

Schwarzenegger has already rejected one other clemency petition from a death row inmate - the only one besides Beardslee's to reach his desk.

Several other legal challenges already have been exhausted, including allegations that Beardslee's lawyer was ineffective and was reading magazines during trial.

Beardslee's remaining claims before the Supreme Court include a challenge that lethal injection is cruel-and-unusual punishment and that jurors were unfairly influenced into rendering a death verdict - issues that will be decided before the first minute of Wednesday, when Beardslee is scheduled to die.

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Editors: David Kravets has been covering state and federal courts for more than a decade. Associated Press writer Brian Melley contributed to this report.

Posted on Fri, Jan. 14, 2005

Options running out for condemned man facing Wednesday execution

Associated Press

Donald Beardslee faces execution Jan. 19 for the murders of two Northern California women in 1981. His appeals are nearly exhausted. Here is a briefing of remaining challenges:

_ A three-judge panel of the Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed his challenge Friday that the lethal injection he is scheduled to receive is cruel and unusual, and violates his First Amendment right of speech. His attorney, Steven Lubliner, said he planned to ask the court to promptly rehear the case with 11 judges. He claims a sedative he will be given might mask his pain when a paralyzing agent is administered - prohibiting him from crying out in pain - in violation of his right of speech.

_ The same appeals court has rejected, and declined to rehear, Beardslee's claim that jurors, when rendering a death verdict, were prejudiced into voting that way. The appeals court ruled that jurors wrongly considered that the murders were carried out to kill the women from being witnesses in court against Beardslee and another co-defendant. But the court ruled that the error didn't prejudice the unanimous jury's conclusion. That challenge is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

_ Beardslee asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday for clemency - a commutation of his death sentence to life without parole. Beardslee, 61, claims the right hemisphere of his brain was inoperative when he committed the murders. The governor's decision is pending.

_ The American Civil Liberties Union, in seeking to halt the execution, claims there will be a violation of the right of speech for those witnessing the execution, which include media representatives, government officials and family members of the two victims. The group alleges that the paralyzing agent administered to Beardslee would prevent the witnesses from seeing him contort or hear his agony. The 9th Circuit, while noting the claim "may have merit," rejected it Friday on procedural grounds. But it suggested the claim could be argued in federal court. The ACLU said it would not immediately continue with the case, but left open the possibility that it might renew the challenge later.

Brain exam, clemency urged for 3-time killer
By Andy Furillo and Mareva Brown -- Bee Staff Writers
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, January 15, 2005


A psychologist says triple-murderer Donald Jay Beardslee has been brain-damaged since birth and a juror who helped put the killer on death row would like to vote again.

But the prosecutor who gained a double-murder conviction against Beardslee in 1983 told the Board of Prison Terms in a clemency hearing Friday in Sacramento that in spite of the inmate's model-prisoner status over the past 21 years, he still should be put to death by lethal injection.

San Mateo County Assistant District Attorney Martin Murray recounted details of Beardslee's role in the 1981 slayings of Patty Geddling and Stacy Benjamin, how he finished off the first victim in Half Moon Bay by shooting her twice in the head with a sawed-off shotgun and how several hours later he garroted the second before cutting her throat and leaving her to die on a remote hillside in Lake County.




Beardslee, 61, also strangled and sliced 52-year-old Laura Griffin in her St. Louis home in 1969. He had been paroled to California after serving five years for the Griffin murder when he killed Geddling and Benjamin in a slaying allegedly sparked by a soured drug deal.

The state parole board met in closed session after Friday's testimony to make a recommendation on whether Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should grant clemency to Beardslee, who is scheduled to be executed at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. Schwarz enegger is expected to make his decision Tuesday.

Tom Amundson, the older brother of Stacy Benjamin, urged the governor to show no mercy.

"He murdered my baby sister - he butchered her," Amundson said at the hearing. "It's time to say goodbye, Mr. Beardslee. That's what I want. That's what my family wants."

Beardslee's brother, Richard, pleaded for a commutation.

"My brother can be described in a simple term: patsy," Richard Beardslee said. "His entire life, he has been a scapegoat, a patsy."

An execution "serves no purpose," Richard Beardslee said.

Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused Friday to stay Beardslee's execution based on the issue of the torturous pain he might suffer.

The judges noted "extremely troubling questions" about chances for the lethal injection procedure to go awry. But they said they lacked information to conclude that Beardslee would remain conscious to feel pain. The first chemical to be administered is a massive dose of a sedative.

Further court action could take place over the weekend on that issue or others.

Beardslee's lawyers last month obtained a report from Dr. Ruben Gur, director of the University of Pennslyvania's Neuropsychology and Brain Behavior lab, that concluded Beardslee suffered from previously undiagnosed brain abnormalities.

According to Gur, who said he reached his conclusion by viewing childhood pictures of Beardslee as well as on conversations with Beardslee's family, the clemency applicant had trouble riding a bicycle as a child and "didn't understand the principles that governed personal relationships."

Beardslee later suffered head injuries in a car accident and again when a tree fell on him.

The cumulative impact of the head trauma and his pre-existing conditions led to "frequent episodes of dissociation" and a susceptibility, Gur said, to being led astray by strong personalities.

One such figure, according to Gur, was a man named Frank Rutherford, a drug dealer prone to violence. Beardslee's lawyers say it was Rutherford who orchestrated the murders of Benjamin and Geddling.

Beardslee met Rutherford after picking up the accomplice's girlfriend, Ricki Soria, hitchhiking in April 1981, Murray said. Two days after the introduction, Beardslee came home from his job as a machinist at Hewlett-Packard to find Rutherford, Soria and another man identified as Billy Forrester in his Redwood City apartment. Shortly afterward, Benjamin and Geddling arrived and were taken hostage over an alleged drug debt.

"In confusing situations, he would look for a guide and follow it," Gur said of Beardslee. "That's apparently what happened in this crime."

Short of clemency, Beardslee's lawyers asked for a delay in the execution so doctors can perform a magnetic resonance imaging examination of his brain.

But Murray argued against the test and strongly disputed whether Beardslee suffers from any brain malfunction.

Testimony at Friday's hearing showed that Beardslee passed a test to get into the Air Force and worked as a jet engine mechanic. While in prison in Missouri, he served as president of the Toastmasters speakers club. Once paroled, Beardslee earned A's and B's at the College of San Mateo. He has an IQ of 113, according to Murray.

"He was a high-functioning individual," Murray said.

Rather than acting as Rutherford's pawn, it was Beardslee who was most culpable of the four people who were arrested - three of them were convicted - in the April 23-24, 1981, slayings of Geddling, 23, and Benjamin, 19, according to Murray.

Beardslee was the only one of the four who was present at and participated in both the killings, which were carried out individually and several hours and about 200 miles apart, Murray said.

The violence began inside Beardslee's apartment when Geddling was accidentally - but not fatally - shot in the shoulder. Beardslee, Soria and Forrester then forced Geddling into a car and drove to Half Moon Bay. Murray said Beardslee loaded the sawed-off shotgun and handed it to Forrester, who shot Geddling first. Forrester then handed the weapon back to Beardslee, who shot her twice, the prosecutor said.

Beardslee and the other two then drove back to Redwood City, Murray said. According to the prosecutor, Beardslee and Rutherford hustled Benjamin into a car and drove her north to Lake County, where the two of them strangled her with a wire before Beardslee cut her throat.

Rutherford and Soria were convicted of first-and second-degree murder and are serving life terms. Forrester, who denied shooting Geddling, was acquitted.

Instead of being caused by a brain disorder, it was an old-fashioned motive that led Beardslee to kill, the prosecutor said: He'd been consorting with drug users and now a woman was shot in his apartment, which added up to a big-time parole violation.

"He had to get rid of the two women, or he was going back to prison for a long, long time," Murray said.

But one of the jurors who returned a death penalty verdict against Beardslee said in an affidavit that he wants to reverse his vote. The juror, Robert Martinez, cited Gur's findings as a key reason for his reconsideration 22 years later.

"I knew something was not right with Mr. Beardslee, but I just did not know what it was," Martinez said in the affidavit.

Murray characterized Martinez's change of heart as "unconscionable."

"It's a disservice to the other 11 members of the jury and to the very jury system itself," Murray said.

Beardslee's lawyers produced another affidavit on their client's behalf from Daniel Vasquez, the former warden at San Quentin Prison, who said Beardslee has been a model prisoner.

Stacy Benjamin's brother was not impressed.

"What else are you going to do?" Amundson said. "You better behave. You have no choice."

About the writer:

* The Bee's Andy Furillo can be reached at (916) 321-1141 or afurillo [at] sacbee.com. Bee legal affairs writer Claire Cooper contributed to this report.

Photos and a bit more text online at

We're all going to save thousands of $$$$ now that the taxpayers no longer have to take care of the bastard.