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| California executes first inmate in three years |
| By Reuters |
| Published: 01/24/2005 |
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California prison officials have put three-time murderer Donald Beardslee to death, in the first execution in the state in three years. Hours after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a clemency appeal and cited Beardslee's "grisly and senseless killings", the warden at San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco gave the midnight order to proceed on Wednesday. Five officers strapped a passive Beardslee to a table to administer lethal injections of three different chemicals, including potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest. The officers, working in a small room with five windows built as a gas chamber, took about 15 minutes to insert intravenous tubes into each arm. Once the drugs started flowing Beardslee let out a big yawn, blinked his eyes several times and moved his head before his breathing stopped shortly thereafter. He spent his last day with his legal team and a female spiritual advisor, prisoner officials said, and did not prepare a final statement. He carried his personal bible to a waiting area before entering the death chamber. Earlier, Beardslee, 61, declined the state's offer of a special last meal of his choice, a prison official said. So he was offered the same meal as other inmates of chilli, macaroni, mixed vegetables, salad and cake -- which he declined. He did ask for grapefruit juice however, a prison spokesman said. After several minutes in which Beardslee was motionless, a note was passed through a hole in the death chamber and the prisoner was pronounced dead at 12:29 a.m. PST (8:29 p.m. British time) on Wednesday, executed for killing two women in 1981. |
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