Jan. 17 NEBRASKA: 5 people massacred in botched robbery----Sandoval Sentenced To Death By Electric Chair It might never heal the wounds of five families, but a sentencing panel has prescribed the death penalty five times for Jose Sandoval. Sandoval personally killed three of five people massacred in September of 2002 during the attempted robbery of a branch of the U.S. Bank in nearby Norfolk. The sentences announced Friday will automatically be reviewed by the Nebraska Supreme Court. Nebraska is the only state that relies solely on the electric chair for executions. That fact could be an issue in the appellate courts. The appeals process could take years to resolve. Sandoval, 25, was 1 of 4 men involved in one of the nations bloodiest bank robberies, and the deadliest in Nebraska history. Sandoval was the ringleader. A three-judge handed down the 5 separate death penalties on Friday. Sandoval was also sentenced to 246 years imprisonment for using a gun in the botched robbery and murders. Slaughtered at the bank were assistant bank manager Lola Elwood, 43; bank employees Sam Sun, 50; Lisa Bryant, 29; Jo Mausbach, 42; and bank customer Evonne Tuttle, 37. Sandoval used a 9 mm pistol to kill Mausbach, Sam Sun and Tuttle. Sandoval allegedly bragged to fellow jail inmates about the murders. He reportedly said of Mausbach: "Bam! I shot that bitch right in the face!" 3 co-defendants were previously convicted in the case, one of the bloodiest bank robberies in the nations history and the deadliest ever in Nebraska. In November, a 3-judge panel sentenced Jorge Galindo to 5 death sentences and 5 consecutive terms of 50 years in prison. Juries had also recommended death sentences for Sandoval and Erik Vela. Vela said earlier that he expected to die in the electric chair for his crimes. He shot and killed Lisa Bryant. Velas attorneys contend he cannot be executed because he is retarded. A hearing on that issue is upcoming. Gabriel Rodriquez, lookout man for the others, was previously sentenced to 5 separate life terms. The sentencing panel for Sandoval was made up of District Judges Patrick Rogers of Norfolk, Earl Witthoff of Lincoln and J. Michael Coffey of Omaha. (source: Nebraska State Paper) CALIFORNIA----impending execution Beardslee 'can't die soon enough for me' ---- Relatives wait decades for killer's execution To this day, the family can be sharing dinner, chuckling over old times, when suddenly someone mentions the name that stops them all cold. Stacey. "That's when it gets real quiet, and we all just kind of shut down," T. Tom Amundsen said, voice barely masking fury. "We just start thinking about her, and we wonder, 'Who can we call to talk to about this?' But we know there's nobody. It's all so horrible. "There's nothing we can do." This week there will be. Barring a last-minute stay or clemency order from the governor, Amundsen will be able to watch the execution of the man who strangled his 19-year-old sister, Stacey Benjamin, with a wire 24 years ago before finishing her off by slicing her throat. The killer, Donald Beardslee, left Benjamin's half-dressed body sprawled in the weeds off a lonely road after midnight near Lakeport in Northern California. Earlier that night, 110 miles south near Half Moon Bay, he had taken a shotgun to her friend, 23-year-old Patty Geddling, and killed her. Defense attorneys argue that Beardslee, now 61, was too brain-damaged to know what he was doing, so a more appropriate sentence than death would be life without parole. Nobody in Benjamin's family agrees with that. Neither does anybody in Geddling's family. They have impatiently waited 24 years for the stroke of 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, when executioners at San Quentin State Prison are scheduled to inject enough poison into Beardslee's veins to kill him. It should take about 5 minutes for Beardslee to die. "This Beardslee, he's been in prison longer than my sister was alive," Amundsen, 54, said by phone from his home near Seattle. "She never got a chance to have a baby, be a wife or a grandmother. She'll never experience having a wedding. All that time since she died ... all that time, wasted. He can't die soon enough for me." Renee Geddling, who was 4 when Beardslee shot her mother in the head, doesn't think an execution will bring her peace. But it's a step she is anxious to see carried out. "Obviously, there will never be closure for me, as far as me not having a mother -- as far as me having to grow up without a mother," Geddling, now 28, said quietly. "But as far as justice being served, it would be good to at least have that." Court and police records say Benjamin and Patty Geddling were killed over a drug debt -- an acquaintance of Beardslee's had given them $185 to buy methamphetamine for him, and he was angry that they never gave him either the drugs or the money back. Testimony given during the trials of Beardslee and his cohorts -- 2 of whom were also convicted of murder -- referred to Benjamin and Geddling almost exclusively as a pair of young women who wanted to buy dope, wound up buying it from the wrong guys, and perhaps hung out with a fast crowd. Their families say that thumbnail description is not just misleading, it also does the murdered women an injustice. "These were very sweet girls," said Doris "Trudie" Anderson, Benjamin's godmother. "I had them both to dinner, and they stayed overnight, and you couldn't have found nicer, more polite young women. And Stacey -- well, she was just so full of life from the minute she was born, so loving and with so much promise. "Those people that killed them were just dirty low-lifes who had nothing to do with them before they killed them." Benjamin spent her early childhood in Mountlake Terrace, a woodsy little town at the base of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state, and by all accounts she took to the outdoor life naturally. "She was always outgoing, a real tomboy, but when she put on a dress she was really elegant, too," said her brother, Amundsen. "When all the boys played baseball or football, they always asked for Stacey because they knew they'd win if she was on their team. She had a lot of life in her." Her family -- she was the middle child, having a younger sister -- moved to Pacifica when Benjamin turned 13, and they lived comfortably on the money from her mother's dry-cleaning business and her father's salary as a Navy chef. As she excelled in math at Jefferson High School, Benjamin decided she was going to be a lawyer or a real estate broker. "She hadn't picked which career, but she was pretty sharp so I figured she could be whatever she wanted to be," Amundsen said. After graduating, Benjamin decided to take a year off before going to college -- and it was during that year that she wound up at Beardslee's apartment in Redwood City, with the wrong people. Neither she nor Geddling knew Beardslee. And they certainly didn't know he was on parole from a 7-year prison term, in Missouri, for strangling and stabbing a woman and leaving her mutilated body in a bathtub in 1969. "When Stacey left us, my mom (Virginia Mondares) just shut down," Amundsen said. "The whole family shut down. It was like someone took the sun away, because it got so dark." Anderson, who was best friends with Benjamin's mother, said Mondares never recovered. "We used to go shopping, go out dancing, have fun, but all that ended," she said. "Virginia became a recluse. I called her up one day eight years ago, and she said the music box in Stacey's room started playing -- it hadn't played in years. She told me, 'Stacey's in the house.' It wasn't like she was nuts or anything. She just always felt Stacey's presence." When Mondares died last February, the family cremated her and scattered her ashes over Lake Tahoe -- which is the same thing they did with Benjamin's ashes. Amundsen said that just before his mother died, she told him that if Beardslee were executed, "you have to be there for our family." Before surrendering his mother's body to the undertaker, Amundsen said, he held her dead hand for a quiet moment. "I told her, 'I promise you I'll finish this.'" Geddling's family also wants to see an end to their long wait for final justice. But they haven't decided yet if any of them will witness Beardslee's dying moments. "I have very few memories of my mother," Renee Geddling said. "I remember playing on the front lawn in the sprinklers with her and my brother, Ivan, and I remember she had a loving smile." She stopped and struggled with her words. "Donald Beardslee made sure those are all the memories I get," she said, almost whispering. Renee and Ivan were Geddling's only children, and after her death they lived in Hillsborough with their grandparents, who are now dead. Their grandfather was a real estate agent -- the same profession Renee chose -- and the kids lived well, but they didn't learn much about their mother's upbringing. She was raised in Albany, where her father made paint for a living, and she was living as a homemaker in San Bruno at the time of her death. Geddling and her husband, Edgar -- who was briefly suspected in the deaths and had a drug-arrest record -- were separated, and Benjamin was a good friend, giving her moral support in her battle over custody of the children. These days, Renee said, Edgar Geddling has no contact with his old family. "I'm told I laugh like my mother a lot and have other gestures of hers, like the way I turn my head," she said. "But I'll never know it firsthand. "I often visit her at Colma Cemetery, but I'll always wonder what she would be like now, always missed her. It's tough. "And it always will be." **** BEARDSLEE CASE Chronology of California events in the case of Donald Beardslee: April 24, 1981: Patty Geddling, 23, is shot to death on the San Mateo County coast. April 25, 1981: Stacey Benjamin, 19, is strangled and her throat is slit in Lake County. March 1984: Beardslee is sentenced to death for Geddling's murder and to life without parole for Benjamin's murder. March 1991: State Supreme Court upholds the death sentence in a 5-2 ruling. November 1991: U.S. Supreme Court denies review. < February 2001: Federal judge upholds the death sentence. March 2003: Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the death sentence. June 2004: U.S. Supreme Court denies review. Dec. 16, 2004: San Mateo County judge schedules execution for Jan. 19, 2005. Dec. 29, 2004: Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejects new appeal. Dec. 30, 2004: Beardslee asks Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency. Jan. 7, 2005: Federal judge rejects Beardslee's challenge to state's procedures for lethal injection. Jan. 14, 2005: Ninth Circuit rejects the challenge to lethal injection. Beardslee's lawyers go before state Board of Prison Terms requesting clemency. Jan. 15, 2005: Ninth Circuit denies rehearing of lethal injection challenge. (source: California attorney general's office) (source: San Francisco Chronicle) ********************* California's Death Penalty Lie Donald Beardslee was 38 years old in 1981 when he shot 1 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 2nd 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 2 murders committed during a 4-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 2 bosses at the gas station where he worked, shooting them execution style. 3 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. (source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times) CONNECTICUT----impending volunteer exectuion Execution Drugs Are Borrowed From The Healers' Catalog Of Powerful Life-Saving Medicines Michael Ross is scheduled to be put to death with lethal doses of three drugs that - at much lower doses - have helped countless patients get through surgery or avoid a dangerously irregular heartbeat. The drugs, in the order they will be given to Ross, are: sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. "Any ... of these drugs, by themselves, could kill somebody," said C. Michael White, associate professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy. Each of the drugs has a property that, in a low dose, can be helpful to the healer. At a high dose, they become a biochemical guillotine. Sodium thiopental is a barbiturate used by doctors to knock out surgical patients, usually before they are put on an inhaled anesthetic. Dr. Stanley Rosenbaum, professor of anesthesia, internal medicine and surgery at the Yale University School of Medicine, said that sodium thiopental and other similar drugs are used to quickly sedate patients for surgery, especially when a breathing tube will be inserted, because conscious patients can find this uncomfortable. White noted that sodium thiopental also is used to control seizures and to lower high blood pressure in the brain. Rosenbaum said that the dose that is planned to be administered for execution - 2,500 milligrams - is about 10 times the average amount used in surgery. "Most likely that [dose] would kill many patients just by itself," he said. White said the high dose would create a "drug-induced coma." Pancuronium bromide is a neuromuscular blocker that causes paralysis. It is used in surgery to block any reflex movement of the unconscious patient while surgery is underway. Rosenbaum said that pancuronium bromide is only given to a patient who has been made unconscious by another anesthetic drug. The execution dose of 100 milligrams is about 10 times the dose given in surgery, according to Rosenbaum. The paralysis caused by pancuronium bromide would stop a person from breathing. Some individuals and groups, such as Amnesty International, object to the use of pancuronium bromide in executions because they claim it simply prevents the prisoner from displaying pain. Potassium chloride, at the executioner's dose of 120 milliequivalent, stops the heart. It is about 10 times the dose that would be given slowly in a hospital for a much different reason: to treat patients with low levels of potassium, a condition that can cause an abnormal heartbeat. "All hospitals are very, very careful with potassium," said White, adding that the chemical used to be stored undiluted on hospital floors and was mixed with solution when needed. But because mixing errors could be fatal, it is now kept in pre-mixed solution in the hospital pharmacy, he said. Rosenbaum, who is on the ethics committee of the American Society of Anesthesiology, said that most physicians feel that it is inappropriate for "healers to be involved in something that is explicitly not healing." He supports the American Medical Association position. He said that anesthesiologists are particularly worried about their potential role in capital punishment. "They have the skills to do [executions] efficiently, but it's not part of what a healer does," he said. In Connecticut, the executioner must be "trained to the satisfaction of a practicing physician." The training of the executioner is a key objection to the state's execution protocol raised by Dr. Mark Heath, an assistant professor of clinical anesthesiology at Columbia University. Heath filed an affidavit as part of a federal lawsuit filed by the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Ross' father, Dan Ross. The lawsuit claims that the state's form of execution constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Heath says that not every physician is trained in the use of these drugs and, therefore, not all doctors would be able to certify the qualifications of an executioner. A poorly trained executioner might botch the injection in any number of ways, Heath observed. Among them: The drugs could be used in the wrong order; the IV tubing could leak; the IV catheter could be inserted improperly; or the restraining straps could act as a tourniquet that prevents the free flow of the drugs. Heath also pointed out that with the executioner in another room, there would be no way to be sure that the inmate had been fully anesthetized before the other 2 drugs were administered. Such an error could lead to the failure of the sodium thiopental to render the inmate fully unconscious. The result, Heath said, would be a grisly, inhumane death. (source: Hartford Courant) **************************** Area Catholics sign anti-death penalty petition Catholics in Stamford and Norwalk joined thousands more across the state in a petition drive to halt the death penalty, saying the punishment is vengeful and ineffective. In a letter read aloud to parishioners Jan. 9, Bishop William Lori of the Diocese of Bridgeport urged Catholics to sign the petition, which was collected after Masses yesterday. The petition will be presented to the General Assembly before Jan. 26, the execution date for convicted serial killer Michael Ross. Backed by the diocese, the Connecticut Catholic Conference developed the petition to try to stop the execution of Ross, 45, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection for killing 8 women in Connecticut and New York in the 1980s. His death would be the 1st execution in New England in 45 years. "I think to put someone into the grave is not necessarily helping them nor necessarily giving back to society," said the Rev. Michael Boccaccio, pastor at St. Philip Church in Norwalk. "I think that a criminal should give back to society." Prisons do not generally rehabilitate people to return to society successfully, and capital punishment doesn't protect innocent people from criminals, he said. Jesus taught that vengeance is his, not ours, Boccaccio said. "I think that's what prompts the death penalty -- vengeance," he said. "Violence breeds violence." But Gerald Bradley of Stamford, who attended Mass at St. John the Evangelist Church in downtown Stamford, said there are cases in which the death penalty is warranted. Child abusers or sexual predators shouldn't be walking the streets, he said. "I see no problem with having that as a solution for such a heinous crime such as that," Bradley said. "I have mixed feelings about the death penalty. I don't believe in eye for an eye but, in some cases, where do you draw the line?" By 11 a.m. about 60 people had signed the petition at St. John's. Some think the death penalty, like abortion, violates the Catholic church's respect for human life. While the church takes a stand on respect for life, it "is very clear that it doesn't condemn capital punishment or condone it," said the Rev. Stephen DiGiovanni, pastor at St. John's. "It's the right of a state to exercise protection of its citizens." Still, DiGiovanni said he planned to sign the petition, though he doesn't know what the response will be. Boccaccio said the petition won't do much. "I think the Catholic Church in general in the last several years has lost some respectability because of our own issues," the Norwalk priest said, alluding to the sex scandals that have rocked the church. "We have so many skeletons in our closets. For us to stand up and righteously say, this is how you should act, it really kind of brings up the question of credibility." Last week, religious leaders, including Catholics, called on state legislators to abolish the death penalty despite a Quinnipiac University poll last week that showed 70 % of Connecticut voters support Ross' execution. According to the telephone poll, 59 % of voters said they support the death penalty, though more make an exception and support it in Ross' case. But Suzanne Dwan, a parishioner at St. Philip's in Norwalk, is not deterred. She works for the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Wilton, a group that has helped stopped a number of executions nationwide. Getting the word out against the death penalty is her duty, Dwan said. "I think we have to keep trying up until the end," she said. "I think God's will will be done one way or another." Wanda Lasko of Stamford, an attorney, said she signed the petition because minorities are disproportionally represented on death row and innocent people are convicted. "Sometimes people are beyond rehabilitation and . . . they just need to be institutionalized for the rest of their lives," she said. "But killing doesn't bring people back." Valerie Duffey, 37, of Norwalk, said she would sign the petition because she believes life is sacred, from conception to natural death. "God's the one that gives life, God's the one that can take the life," she said. "Who are we to say, 'You die, you live, you die?' That's what's happening in society today. It's too many people trying to take that power into themselves." (source: Stamford Advocate) ARIZONA: "Is the Wrong Man on Death Row?" Jeffrey Toobin, in 1/17/05 New Yorker, has a long article on Arizona death row inmate Martin Soto-Fong, and asks whether former prosecutor Kenneth Peasly put the wrong man on death row. The article is not available at the New Yorker site, but the Federal Defender's office in Arizona has put up a copy. [See Link below] Last year, Peasley was disbarred for intentionally presenting false evidence in a death penalty case, in which 3 men were convicted and sentenced to die. Peasley was convinced that they were guilty, but he also believed that the evidence needed a push. www.fpdaz.org/assets/currentnews/Killer%20Instincts/Toobin.pdf
