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California Executes Donald Beardslee, Its First Execution in Three Years

Beardslee killed two young women in 1981 while on parole for a murder in Missouri. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected his lawyers' claim of brain damage.

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Illustration of protesters holding candles on a bayside path facing a lit prison building across the water at night. Not an actual scene from the case.

California had not executed anyone in three years. Early on January 19, 2005, it put to death Donald Beardslee, who killed two young women in 1981 while on parole for a murder in Missouri.

Beardslee, 61, was given a lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison and pronounced dead at 12:29 a.m. He made no last statement. It was the state's 11th execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978 and the first under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had rejected a clemency petition hours earlier. The U.S. Supreme Court denied two last-minute appeals without comment. About 300 protesters stood vigil outside the prison, and four relatives of the victims were among the witnesses.

Beardslee was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of Patty Geddling, 23, and Stacie Benjamin, 19, who were killed in April 1981 after a dispute over a $185 drug deal in Redwood City. He was sentenced to death in San Mateo County in 1984. In 1969 he had killed a woman in Missouri and served seven years in prison. His lawyers argued that undetected brain damage had caused the killings, but Schwarzenegger rejected the claim. "We are not dealing here with a man who is so generally affected by his impairment that he cannot tell the difference between right and wrong," the governor said. He also noted that Beardslee was the only one of three people convicted in the murders who was on parole for another killing at the time.

The California Department of Corrections spelled the younger victim's name Stacie Benjamin, while the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times spelled it Stacey.

Sources