Robert Wayne Danielson was sentenced to death in November 1986 for the robbery and murder of Benjamin and Edith Shaffer, a retired couple who were camping near Manchester, in Mendocino County, California, in July 1982. The couple vanished that summer, and nearly two years passed before their remains were recovered. The case broke open in early 1984, when Danielson's former girlfriend, who had been with him in Mendocino County, told police what had happened and led officers to the scene. Danielson was arrested in Odessa, Texas, in April 1984, tried in Mendocino County Superior Court and condemned by a jury that also heard about an earlier manslaughter conviction and about violent acts in which he had never been tried.
The California Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence in October 1992, over two dissents on the penalty. He was never executed. He died in his cell on death row at San Quentin State Prison on September 7, 1995, and the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office records his death as a suicide.
Little about Danielson's early life appears in the court record beyond what his lawyers presented when they asked the jury to spare him. That evidence, as the California Supreme Court summarized it, described a troubled childhood, years in prison, drug use and depression. By the time of the Shaffer killings he had a substantial criminal record. At the penalty phase of his trial the prosecution put before the jury his earlier felony convictions for possession of drugs, possession of a firearm, forgery and voluntary manslaughter. The manslaughter conviction was for the killing of a man named Thomas Davis. The court's opinion does not give the year or place of that killing. United Press International reported in 1995 that Danielson had served time in an Oregon state prison for manslaughter.
How he met the young woman who became his girlfriend and, later, the main witness against him is not recorded. In the summer of 1982 the two of them hitchhiked from Oregon to California.
Benjamin and Edith Shaffer were retirees. The Mendocino County District Attorney's Office describes them as a couple camping in their motor home at Manchester while passing through the county. The California Supreme Court called them an elderly couple. Danielson and his girlfriend had hitchhiked from Oregon to a trailer park in Mendocino County, and they had talked with the Shaffers before the day of the crime.
According to the girlfriend's testimony, as the court summarized it, the two were low on money and discussed robbing and killing someone. They chose the Shaffers. In July 1982, by her account, both Benjamin and Edith Shaffer were shot dead, and the two then took the couple's travelers checks, credit cards and other belongings.
They did not stay. Danielson and the girlfriend drove the Shaffers' camper to Nevada, where they used the couple's cards and checks to make purchases. Evidence at trial showed that Danielson tried to forge the Shaffers' names on credit card slips and on travelers checks, though the prosecution's handwriting expert could not say for certain that he had signed them. In Nevada, Danielson spoke with an acquaintance and, after an evening of beer and marijuana, told him that he had killed the Shaffers. The acquaintance later repeated that admission at trial, including details of the shootings.
The Shaffers had simply disappeared. For nearly two years the case went unsolved. Then, in early 1984, Danielson's former girlfriend implicated him. She led officers to the scene, and the couple's remains were recovered there.
On April 5, 1984, he was arrested in a carnival trailer in Odessa, Texas, together with a woman who had been his girlfriend for about six months. The next day an FBI agent, Billy Kirkwood, arranged for her release and went with her to the carnival grounds. She gathered Danielson's belongings from an open storage trailer and handed them over, saying she meant to go back to Tennessee. Kirkwood later testified that he took the items for safekeeping and sent them, unexamined, to the FBI office in Eugene, Oregon. Among them was a duffel bag that had belonged to one of the victims. Danielson's lawyers later fought to keep that property out of evidence. The trial court refused to suppress it, and the California Supreme Court, while finding the government's justifications for the seizure weak, held that any error in admitting the bag was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Danielson was later charged in Mendocino County with burglary, robbery, kidnapping and murder, with special-circumstance allegations that made him eligible for the death penalty.
The case was tried in Mendocino County Superior Court before Judge James W. Luther. It was a long proceeding: the record later sent to the California Supreme Court ran to more than 15,000 pages of reporter's transcript, plus 2,970 pages of other trial records and 14 volumes of juror questionnaires.
Jury selection drew its own dispute. The defense argued that the court's practice of excusing jurors for hardship had thinned out Black and Hispanic residents from the panels. A defense expert found that 75 percent of minority prospective jurors had been excused, against 51 percent of white prospective jurors, and the defense asked for a continuance. The trial court refused. On appeal the California Supreme Court held that the request came too late and that a disparity produced by race-neutral excusal practices did not show systematic exclusion. It also rejected the argument that Danielson was entitled to jurors drawn from the area around Manchester rather than from the whole county.
The prosecution's case rested on two witnesses. The first was the former girlfriend, who testified under a grant of immunity. Her agreement required her to give full testimony about Danielson's part in the crimes; it protected her from prosecution based on her answers and on evidence derived from them, though not from charges of perjury or contempt. The second was the acquaintance from Nevada who said Danielson had confessed to him. The defense attacked both. It argued that the girlfriend had every reason to put the blame on Danielson in order to win immunity, and it pointed out that the Nevada witness had gone to police only after he himself was arrested for armed robbery. He denied that he was seeking leniency and said that his five-year sentence had already been negotiated.
Physical evidence supported the two witnesses. A firearms comparison closely matched bullets recovered from the scene with a gun Danielson had once owned, and there was the evidence of his attempts to sign the Shaffers' names on their credit slips and checks. The jury found him guilty on every count, found the murders to be of the first degree and found the special-circumstance allegations true.
The trial was also marked by an incident at the courthouse. UPI reported in 1995 that a loaded revolver figured in an escape attempt at the Mendocino County courthouse during his trial, and that his mother was convicted of abetting her son's attempt to escape and sentenced to three years in prison.
Because the special circumstances had been found true, the same jury then heard evidence on whether he should be sentenced to death. The prosecution introduced his prior felony convictions and evidence of violent acts for which he had never been tried: the killing of a man named Arthur Gray, and the armed robbery and attempted murder of a married couple. The California Supreme Court later held that such unadjudicated acts, and the circumstances around them, were properly admitted. The court's opinion does not say where or when those acts took place.
The defense called witnesses who described Danielson's troubled childhood, his experiences in prison, his drug use and depression, his good conduct in the county jail and his remorse. He testified himself about his background, his criminal history and his conversion to Christianity, and he read a statement in which he expressed remorse and asked the jury for a "fair judgment."
Two mental health witnesses testified for him. Dr. Peter Mayland, a psychiatrist, described his life history and development, predicted that he could function in prison, and had prescribed him Valium and Soma during the trial. Mayland at first worried that Danielson was overmedicated and later concluded that he was all right. Dr. Judith Huff, a psychologist, testified about his psychological profile and a possible underlying depression; she said the medication may have made diagnosis harder and that the doses could cause sedation and memory problems. The prosecution answered with Dr. Lee Coleman, who testified that psychiatric testimony in general is unreliable. When defense counsel raised concern that Danielson was too heavily medicated while on the stand, the judge held a hearing outside the jury's presence and found that he was not oversedated and was competent to proceed.
The moment that later divided the California Supreme Court came on cross-examination. Over a defense objection, the prosecutor asked Danielson what punishment he himself thought was appropriate. He answered, as the court quoted him: "If I were one of the 12 jurors, I would vote for the death penalty." The prosecutor did not mention the answer in closing argument.
The jury returned a verdict of death. Judgment of death was entered on November 13, 1986.
Under California law the death sentence went directly to the state Supreme Court. The State Public Defender was appointed to represent him in March 1987, and the opening brief, 305 pages long, was filed in June 1989. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus was denied in November 1991. The court heard argument in San Francisco on September 8, 1992, and decided the case on October 22, 1992, in an opinion by Chief Justice Lucas joined by Justices Panelli, Arabian, Baxter and George.
The majority rejected every claim. It found no reversible error in the jury-selection rulings, the seizure of property in Texas, the prosecutor's description of the immunity agreement, the lack of written guilt-phase instructions, the handling of two prospective jurors with views on the death penalty, the instructions at the penalty phase, the admission of the unadjudicated acts, the testimony of Dr. Coleman, or the court's decision not to hold a formal competency hearing. It held that his earlier manslaughter conviction raised no double jeopardy bar to its use as evidence. On the question about his own view of the penalty, the majority held that it was relevant because Danielson had put his remorse and his acceptance of responsibility in issue on direct examination. Prosecutors, it said, should generally avoid such questions, but this one was not misconduct, and the jury had been properly told that the decision was its own.
Justices Mosk and Kennard each agreed that the conviction should stand but dissented from the death sentence. Justice Kennard wrote that a defendant's opinion of the proper penalty is not a factor the law allows a jury to weigh, that the question left him with no good answer, and that, because the choice between life and death in his case was fairly debatable, the error could have made the difference; she would have sent the case back for a new penalty trial. Justice Mosk added that the ruling set a double standard, since defendants who want to ask for life are often kept from doing so, and that jurors could easily reason that if the defendant himself favored death, they should too.
The court denied rehearing on December 30, 1992, modifying its opinion without changing the judgment. An execution date of May 12, 1993, was set. On March 10, 1993, the court stayed the execution while Danielson asked the United States Supreme Court to review the case, and on June 21, 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court declined.
According to UPI, Danielson was also convicted in Oregon of robbing and killing a man at an Oregon campground. That victim was not named, and the date of the conviction and the sentence were not reported.
Danielson remained on death row at San Quentin. On September 15, 1995, prison officials confirmed that he had apparently died in his cell on September 7. A prison spokeswoman, Lt. Joy McFarlane, said the Marin County Coroner's Office would make the final ruling, and UPI noted that, if the death was ruled a suicide, it would be the eleventh by a condemned prisoner in his cell since 1978. The Mendocino County District Attorney's Office, in its list of defendants sentenced to death or to life without parole in the county, records that Danielson died by suicide on September 7, 1995, while awaiting execution.
Two sets of violent acts were put before the California jury as aggravating evidence without ever having been tried at that point: the killing of Arthur Gray, and the armed robbery and attempted murder of a married couple. Neither had been tried when the jury heard the evidence, and the death verdict does not show what the jurors concluded about each. The court's opinion gives no date or place for either.
The reports differ on some details. UPI's 1995 report placed the Shaffers' disappearance in 1986, but the California Supreme Court and the Mendocino County District Attorney both date the killings to July 1982, and the trial ended in 1986. UPI also said Danielson was arrested almost two years after the couple disappeared, which agrees with the court's account of an April 1984 arrest.
Before the 1986 trial: Danielson has been convicted of felonies including drug possession, firearm possession, forgery and the voluntary manslaughter of Thomas Davis.
Summer 1982: Danielson and his girlfriend hitchhike from Oregon to a trailer park in Mendocino County, California.
July 1982: Benjamin and Edith Shaffer are robbed and shot dead in Mendocino County; Danielson and his girlfriend drive their camper to Nevada and use their cards and checks.
Early 1984: The former girlfriend implicates Danielson and leads officers to the scene; the Shaffers' remains are recovered.
April 5, 1984: Danielson is arrested in a carnival trailer in Odessa, Texas.
1986: A Mendocino County jury convicts him of burglary, robbery, kidnapping and first-degree murder, finds the special circumstances true and returns a death verdict.
November 13, 1986: Judgment of death is entered.
March 1987: The State Public Defender is appointed for the automatic appeal.
November 1991: A habeas corpus petition is denied.
September 8, 1992: The California Supreme Court hears argument.
October 22, 1992: The court affirms the conviction and death sentence; Justices Mosk and Kennard dissent on the penalty.
December 30, 1992: Rehearing is denied.
March 10, 1993: An execution set for May 12, 1993, is stayed pending a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
June 21, 1993: The U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari.
September 7, 1995: Danielson dies in his cell on death row at San Quentin.
September 15, 1995: Prison officials confirm the death.