California
faces two executions
SAN
FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal appeals court
ruled Wednesday that a San Mateo man should
be executed for murdering two young women
in 1981.
The
unanimous decision, combined with the scheduled
Feb. 10 execution of Kevin Cooper, paves
the way for what could be a rarity: California
executing two inmates in one year.
Executions are uncommon in California, despite
it having the nation's largest death row
of 637 inmates. Since the U.S. Supreme Court
allowed states to resume executions in 1976,
California has executed 10 condemned inmates.
Only in 1996 and 1999 did two California
executions occur in the same year.
By
contrast, Texas, the nation's most active
death penalty state, has executed more than
300 inmates since 1982.
Wednesday's
case concerned Donald Beardslee, now 60,
who was convicted of killing Stacy Benjamin,
19, and her friend Patty Geddling, 23, after
a drug deal went sour at his Redwood City
apartment in April 1981. The jury found
that he shot Geddling and slashed Benjamin's
throat.
He
was on parole from Missouri, where he was
convicted of murder.
On
appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, Beardslee claimed ineffective assistance
of counsel and other issues. He said his
now-deceased attorney was reading "Bon
Appetit" magazines while Beardslee
was testifying in San Mateo County Superior
Court.
A
three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based
appeals court rejected that and other challenges
a year ago and the court on Wednesday declined
to reconsider its decision.
In
the Cooper execution scheduled next month,
the first in California in two years, Cooper
is petitioning the Supreme Court to block
his execution and has requested Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger delay his execution and order
the state to conduct new DNA tests. He claims
previous tests were tainted by authorities,
an assertion prosecutors deny.
Cooper,
46, was convicted in 1985 and sentenced
to death for the murders of Douglas and
Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter,
Jessica, and her 11-year-old friend, Christopher
Hughes.
The
victims were stabbed and hacked repeatedly
with a hatchet and buck knife. The Ryens'
8-year-old son, Joshua, had his throat slit
but survived.
Cooper,
who says he is innocent, had escaped from
a nearby prison where he was serving a 4-year
sentence for robbery when the murders were
committed. Authorities speculated his motive
was to steal the family's station wagon.
Meanwhile,
Rubin ''Hurricane'' Carter, a professional
boxer who was unjustly convicted of a triple
murder in New Jersey and served two decades
in prison, is to hold a news conference
on Thursday in Sacramento in a bid to persuade
Schwarzenegger to delay Cooper's execution.
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