Schwarzenegger allows first execution for three years

A triple murderer has become the first person to be executed by the state of California in three years. Donald Beardslee was put to death this morning after the governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, rejected a clemency appeal, citing Beardslee's "grisly and senseless killings." Schwarzenegger allows first execution for three years

Telegraph

(Filed: 19/01/2005)

A triple murderer has become the first person to be executed by the state of California in three years.

Donald Beardslee was put to death this morning after the governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, rejected a clemency appeal, citing Beardslee's "grisly and senseless killings."

Lethal injections of three different chemicals, including potassium chloride, which causes heart failure, were administered to Beardslee at San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco.

Beardslee's attorneys had argued he was duped by accomplices and was suffering from mental illness aggravated by brain injuries when he shot Stacey Benjamin, 19, and choked and slashed the throat of Patty Geddling, 23, in California.

The Air Force veteran, who was out on parole at the time for a 1969 murder of a young woman in Missouri, confessed to both killings.

He had been on death row since 1984.

Mr Schwarzenegger said: "The state and federal courts have affirmed his conviction and death sentence, and nothing in his petition or the record of his case convinces me that he did not understand the gravity of his actions or that these heinous murders were wrong."

Beardslee was the 11th inmate executed since California restored the death penalty in 1978 and the first since Mr Schwarzenegger, a former Hollywood actor, became governor in 2003.

He was one of 640 people on California's death row, which is the largest in the nation. Texas is second with 455.

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