Jan. 12 (in) IDAHO: 'JUVENILES ON DEATH ROW' They are the faces of America's youth, but these faces are also on death row. A noted photographer was on the campus of Idaho State University Monday, presenting his exhibit of "Juveniles on Death Row." New York Photographer Toshi Kazama presented the culmination of an 8 year project. The photo exhibit shows the faces of juvenile inmates, their families and the families of victims from across the country. Kazama says the inspiration for the project comes from being a father of 3. When he heard there were teenagers on death row he felt the need to do something. Toshi Kazama/Photographer: "When I learned about 16-year-olds who are on death row, that really kind of like wow, what's wrong with us, we as a society we have a problem. 16 year olds who commit a crime, as a society the only solution we have is to kill the child, and that kind of puzzles me; it bothers me." Kazama wants the exhibit to inspire people to look at ways to prevent crime. For the next 3 weeks, his work will be on display in the Transition Gallery located on the 1st floor of the Student Union Building. (source: KPVI-TV News) CALIFORNIA----impending execution Beardslee's story gets attention as execution date draws nearer When a San Mateo County jury sent Donald Beardslee to death row more than 20 years ago, his violent, seedy story came and went without much notice. His accomplices were drug dealers and thieves. Police had mug shots of the two young women he killed, both drifting through lives of drugs and petty crime. Beardslee was a lonely parolee who'd killed before. But after two decades on death row, Beardslee, barring an unlikely last minute reprieve from the courts or the governor, is about to gain statewide attention for his life -- and his crimes. He is scheduled to be executed Jan. 19. He would become the 11th man put to death in California since the state restored capital punishment in 1978 and the 1st from San Mateo County. To those fighting his execution, Beardslee is a figure to be pitied, sort of an accidental murderer. He is described in recent documents as a brain-damaged, 61-year-old man who was so passive he allowed himself to be dragged into a murderous scheme by a befriended prostitute, a dangerous drug dealer and the estranged husband of one of his victims. Beardslee's lawyers will make this argument next Friday in a clemency bid before the state Board of Prisons Terms, which will then forward a recommendation to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. To the state and the families of Beardslee's victims, he is a sociopath who deserves the ultimate punishment for his role in the 1981 slayings of Patty Geddling and Stacy Benjamin. Those who want to see Beardslee executed can't shake the fact he was already on parole for strangling a Missouri woman to death in 1969. "The guy murdered three women total," said Ivan Geddling, now a Peninsula construction worker who was 5 years old when his 23-year-old mother was killed. "It's not like a brawl at a bar where he beat some other guy to death. These are just women. He should be put to death." Beardslee's road to execution traces back to Missouri, where he grew up in a middle-class family with a younger sister and a brother who eventually became a Southern California police officer. In documents recently filed in Beardslee's clemency request, family members described him as an "odd," socially awkward man who never displayed a violent streak or a particular propensity for breaking the law while growing up. Beardslee, withdrawn and uncommunicative in social settings, didn't spend time in juvenile courts like many inmates who wind up on death row, his record shows. Family members say he bore the brunt of his mother's overbearing ways, and that he took it the hardest when his father died of cancer when he was 11 years old. He was sexually abused by other men when he attended a military prep school, according to his clemency papers. But Beardslee eventually graduated from high school and enlisted in the Air Force, where he spent 4 years before being honorably discharged in 1966. Three years later, Beardslee committed the crime that prosecutors would later use as the chief ammunition for executing him. Beardslee came forward to police and confessed to strangling an acquaintance named Laura Griffin and drowning her in her bathtub. Beardslee told investigators he was drunk and had little memory of the crime. He eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 19 years in a Missouri state prison. Seven years later, the Missouri prison system paroled Beardslee to California to temporarily live with his mother, recommending that he undergo mental health treatment. But after a few months, he discontinued the treatment. Beardslee stayed crime-free from 1977 until the 1981 weekend of the murders that put him on death row. He worked for Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto and lived in a rented Redwood City apartment. Things didn't go wrong until early 1981 when he took in a prostitute named Ricarda "Ricki" Soria so he could help her clean up her life. Instead, Beardslee became enmeshed in Soria's world of drug dealers. And it led to this month's date in San Quentin's death chamber. While there are conflicting accounts of the murders, there is no dispute that Geddling and Benjamin were lured to Beardslee's apartment at the urging of Frank Rutherford, a drug dealer with a history of violence and a friend of Soria's. Others implicated were William Forrester, who'd felt ripped off by Benjamin over a drug deal, and Soria. Records show that Edgar Geddling, Patty's estranged husband, also may have played a central role in encouraging Rutherford to go after the two women because he'd discovered they were in a romantic relationship. Rutherford actually shot Geddling first, in the shoulder, and instructed Beardslee and Forrester to take her away. They then took her to a secluded area around Half Moon Bay, where she was shot in the head several times and dumped. Beardslee fired what prosecutors say were the fatal shots, although he claimed he believed she was already dead and that he feared Rutherford would kill him if he didn't participate. Beardslee and the rest of the group then took the 19-year-old Benjamin to a remote spot in Lake County. Rutherford strangled her while Beardslee slit her throat. Beardslee cooperated with the police from the start. He confessed to his role in the crimes; he even testified at Rutherford's trial. But the case turned out worse for Beardslee than anyone else. He got the death penalty. Rutherford got a life prison term, although Beardslee, ironically, has outlived him. Rutherford died in prison of cancer in 2002. Soria is still serving a 15-years-to-life prison term. Forrester was acquitted. And Edgar Geddling, still living in San Francisco, was never charged. "I just always believed that in this cast of characters, when none of the others got the death penalty, it shouldn't have been given to him," John Balliet, one of Beardslee's trial lawyers and now a prosecutor in Kentucky, said of Beardslee's fate. "But I guess when you are talking about somebody's second murder, it's not surprising jurors and prosecutors are going to say that's just one too many." Prosecutor Carl Holm, now a judge, used the Missouri murder to urge the jury to give Beardslee a death sentence. The jury did struggle with Beardslee's fate. At one point, records show, the panel was leaning 10 to 2 in favor of giving him life in prison without the possibility of parole. But after 4 days of deliberations, they decided Beardslee deserved to be executed. In documents filed with the governor on Friday, San Mateo prosecutors insist that Beardslee earned the death penalty, being the only person in the conspiracy to take active part in murdering both Geddling and Benjamin. And they say those two murders and the killing of Griffin in Missouri 35 years ago have left a long trail of victims -- Geddling's children, Benjamin's family and Griffin's children. Sandra Curry, one of Griffin's daughters, believes a reason her husband committed suicide in 1973 was the trauma of finding her mother's body. She told Schwarzenegger that Beardslee should never have been let out of prison to kill in California, and should be executed now. "He did not show mercy to my mother or those 2 young women," Curry, now a 62-year-old grandmother, wrote in a recent letter. "Why should he receive mercy now?" (source: Contra Costa Times) ******************* Juror, warden and clergy urge clemency for condemned man A former San Quentin State Prison warden and a juror who voted for Donald Beardslee's execution are urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute his sentence to life without parole. The letters to Schwarzenegger, released Tuesday, come as the governor considers his second request for clemency since taking office, and days before the 61-year-old condemned man's Jan. 19 execution at San Quentin. The juror, Robert Martinez, is seizing on Beardslee's clemency petition in which his attorneys and doctors say Beardslee's right hemisphere of the brain is "virtually nonfunctioning" and was so when he killed 2 women after luring them to his Redwood City apartment in 1981. A doctor who examined him said the impairment, perhaps caused by a vehicle accident or when he was struck by a tree four decades ago, is the source of his "distorted perception of reality," Beardslee said in his clemency petition. Martinez said had he known of these alleged impairments during the trial, he would have voted against death. An unanimous verdict is required for death, and two other jurors told Schwarzenegger that more testing on Beardslee should be conducted before he is executed. "This kind of information would have made a difference to me and it would have helped me stay on the side of life without the possibility of parole," Martinez said. Daniel Vasquez, the former warden, urged leniency as well, calling Beardslee "a model prisoner" during his time San Quentin, and said he would be an "asset to the safety and smooth running of the institution." Schwarzenegger, who denied clemency last year to the 1st condemned man facing execution under his watch, is holding a clemency hearing for Beardslee on Friday. Meanwhile, during a late afternoon anti-death penalty rally in San Francisco, several members of the clergy and others urged Schwarzenegger to give Beardslee a term of life without parole. The Rev. Bruce Bramlett, a spiritual adviser to death row inmates at San Quentin, said executing Beardslee "denigrates all who claim to be civilized." Deacon George Salinger asked: "How do you answer violence with violence?" How does that solve anything?" Beardslee, now 61, was convicted of killing Paula Geddling and Stacey Benjamin to get even for a soured drug deal. The crime began when Frank Rutherford, who is serving a life sentence in connection to the murders, shot Geddling in the shoulder when she came to Beardslee's apartment in Redwood City. The defendants lured the two women there to seek revenge for being stiffed out of drugs. Beardslee and Rutherford took the wounded Geddling to a roadside along Highway 1 in San Mateo County, where she was shot several times. Benjamin was strangled and her throat slit the same day in a secluded area in Lake County. The jury convicted Beardslee of performing the acts that proved fatal to both victims, and he confessed to the crimes. His court appeals are nearly exhausted. (source: Associated Press)
