Execution looms for convicted killer

By DAVID KRAVETS, AP Legal Affairs Writer
Last Updated 8:57 am PST Monday, January 17, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - 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. 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 and, there 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 Friday's 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.