Just days before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Donald Beardslee in California, the Los Angeles Times has called for his clemen­cy while ques­tion­ing the even-hand­ed­ness of the whole sys­tem. The edi­to­r­i­al con­cludes that the death penal­ty is a ​“lie” to the peo­ple of California:


Donald Beardslee was 38 years old in 1981 when he shot one woman and stran­gled and slashed anoth­er in San Mateo County, retal­i­a­tion for a soured drug deal. He is now 61. So many years have passed since a jury sen­tenced him to die in the gas cham­ber that the infa­mous green room at San Quentin Prison has become a gris­ly rel­ic. Beardslee’s exe­cu­tion, now sched­uled for Wednesday, will be by lethal injec­tion.

It’s tak­en state pros­e­cu­tors near­ly 24 years to arrive at this moment, and Beardslee’s case alone has prob­a­bly cost tax­pay­ers more than $1 mil­lion. Yet his wind­ing path to the death cham­ber is hard­ly unusu­al, and his case demon­strates the caprice, unfair­ness and waste woven through California’s death penal­ty.

In con­cept, many Californians seem to approve of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment; as vot­ers, they reg­u­lar­ly declare addi­tion­al crimes sub­ject to the death penal­ty. California law now lists more than 30 ​“death-eli­gi­ble” spe­cial cir­cum­stances, more than any oth­er state.

The broad lat­i­tude of pros­e­cu­tors to ask for death and the will­ing­ness of juries to com­ply has put 640 men and women on death row, the largest con­demned pop­u­la­tion in the nation.Texas, which exe­cutes its con­demned pris­on­ers more swift­ly, is sec­ond with 455 inmates.

Beardslee was sub­ject to the death penal­ty because he com­mit­ted mul­ti­ple mur­ders. So was Leonard E. Brown. In 1981, the Compton man, then 23, was con­vict­ed of two mur­ders com­mit­ted dur­ing a four-day PCP-fueled spree that also includ­ed rape, assault and rob­bery. But the Los Angeles jury that heard Brown’s case sen­tenced him to life with­out parole instead of death. That same year an Orange County judge sen­tenced anoth­er man, William Caywood, to life after a jury dead­locked over the death penal­ty. Caywood mur­dered his two boss­es at the gas sta­tion where he worked, shoot­ing them exe­cu­tion style.

Three men, each con­vict­ed of two mur­ders, yet only one is sen­tenced to death.

California does more than many states to keep the inno­cent from being exe­cut­ed and to ensure that those con­demned get fair tri­als. The appeals and assur­ances may take decades to work their cost­ly way through the courts, which is anoth­er mat­ter. But in the whole com­pli­cat­ed process, noth­ing address­es the inequal­i­ty of the death penal­ty’s appli­ca­tion. Judges in California can­not throw out a cap­i­tal sen­tence on the ground that defen­dants who com­mit­ted sim­i­lar crimes were not sen­tenced to die.

So few California lawyers are qual­i­fied to han­dle death-penal­ty appeals that 248 inmates still have no attor­ney appoint­ed for at least one phase of this review process. So much cost and time are involved in these com­plex chal­lenges that Beardslee’s exe­cu­tion would be only the 11th since vot­ers rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1978. But speed­ing up the process would nec­es­sar­i­ly mean accept­ing less-qual­i­fied lawyers for the appeals and increas­ing the risk of exe­cut­ing defen­dants who are inno­cent or were unfair­ly con­vict­ed.

Beardslee con­fessed to his crimes, and pros­e­cu­tors paint­ed him as a cal­cu­lat­ing, remorse­less killer. Those were among the fac­tors that led the jury to rec­om­mend death. But Beardslee’s appel­late lawyers argue that exten­sive brain dam­age he suf­fered in acci­dents as a child and young man put him under the sway of a dom­i­neer­ing accom­plice who direct­ed the mur­ders.

The orig­i­nal tri­al jury heard about those acci­dents but not about the last­ing dam­age they might have caused or the effect on his per­son­al­i­ty and behav­ior. The brain-imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy now avail­able did­n’t then exist. His lawyers’ con­tentions on that dam­age form the basis of a clemen­cy peti­tion now before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The gov­er­nor should grant that peti­tion and at least com­mute Beardslee’s sen­tence to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. But Beardslee’s case also demon­strates the impos­si­ble posi­tion California is now in: By erect­ing a death penal­ty scheme that sen­tences so many to death and exe­cutes so few, the state lies to itself and the peo­ple about what it’s doing.

(Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2005) (empha­sis added). See Clemency, Editorials, and Upcoming Executions.

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