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Indybay Feature

Beardslee set to Executed tonight just after midnght

by repost from SF Chron
The Governator denied clemency and the Supreme Court didn't say anything in denying Beardslee's appeals, so now people are going to be headed to the East San Quentin gates tonight for a vigil against the Death Penalty.
Beardslee to be executed
Governor denies clemency; Supreme Court won't review his appeals

By Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the U.S. Supreme Court refused this afternoon to block the execution of Donald Beardslee, who is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at a minute past midnight for murdering two young Peninsula women in 1981.

Schwarzenegger denied a clemency request by Beardslee's lawyers, who said the 61-year-old prisoner suffers from serious brain damage that prevented him from making independent judgments at the time of the killings. The governor said Beardslee apparently has a mental impairment but had acted purposefully in committing the murders and trying to cover them up.

"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 said.

Shortly after Schwarzenegger's decision was released, the Supreme Court, without comment, denied review of Beardslee's last two appeals.

One was a claim that jurors at the penalty phase of his trial were prejudiced when the judge told them that Beardslee had been convicted of killing the two women to eliminate them as witnesses. That charge was later ruled invalid, but it did not affect the death sentence.

In the other appeal, 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.

Beardslee, of Redwood City, was convicted of the shotgun murder of Patty Geddling, 23, and the throat-slashing death of Stacey Benjamin, 19. Prosecutors say the two were killed in revenge for a drug debt claimed by another man. Beardslee was on parole at the time after serving a prison term for a 1969 murder in Missouri.

He would be first prisoner executed at San Quentin Prison in three years and the 11th since California resumed executions in 1992 after a 25-year halt.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko [at] sfchronicle.com.
by Scott Young (syoung [at] surewest.com)
Only God has the right to kill another human being. I find this kind of punishment cruel and unusual. I can not believe our F&#kin governor will let this happen. He will never get another vote from this democrat who voted for him before.
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