Beardslee v. Woodford
| Decision Date | 20 March 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 01-99007.,01-99007. |
| Citation | 327 F.3d 799 |
| Parties | Donald BEARDSLEE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Jeanne S. WOODFORD, Warden, of the California State Prison at San Quentin, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Steven S. Lubliner, Law Offices of Steven S. Lubliner, Petaluma, CA, for the petitioner-appellant.
Dane R. Gillette, Deputy Attorney General, San Francisco, CA, for the respondent-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California; Saundra B. Armstrong, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-92-03990-SBA.
Before TASHIMA, THOMAS and PAEZ, Circuit Judges.
Donald Beardslee appeals from the district court's denial of his petition for habeas corpus. Juries in San Mateo County, California, convicted Beardslee on two counts of first degree murder with special circumstances and sentenced him to death. The California Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence, and Beardslee filed a habeas corpus petition in federal district court. The district court rejected each of his claims and dismissed the petition. We affirm.
On April 24, 1981, Donald Beardslee returned home from work and discovered that his roommate, Rickie Soria, and a few of her friends had arranged to "get back at" Stacy Benjamin in Beardslee's apartment. Benjamin had taken drug money from William Forrester but had not delivered the drugs. Forrester, Soria, and Frank Rutherford planned to lure her to the apartment with a request for drugs and then force her to return the money. Beardslee, who had invited Soria to move in with him the previous month, was acquainted with her friends and knew of their involvement with drugs. Beardslee claimed he was especially fearful of the violent Rutherford, who brought a sawed-off shotgun to the apartment that evening.
Beardslee agreed to allow the plan to proceed in his apartment and participated in the preparations, although he claimed he did so reluctantly. After Benjamin and her friend Patty Geddling arrived, Beardslee closed the apartment door and heard the shotgun go off behind him. Rutherford had shot Geddling in the shoulder, apparently accidentally.
After explaining away the noise to his landlords, Beardslee spent several hours in the bathroom with Geddling trying to stop the bleeding, although he also left to dispose of some evidence and clean Rutherford's clothing. Eventually, Beardslee helped Geddling into a van driven by Forrester, and the three of them drove toward the coast, followed by Soria in Beardslee's car. Geddling was told she was being taken to a hospital. However, Beardslee knew she would be killed.
After driving some distance along the coast, Beardslee told Forrester to turn off the main road, and Forrester stopped the van. Beardslee then loaded the shotgun and handed it to Forrester, who shot Geddling twice. After feeling Geddling's wrist, Beardslee returned to the car, reloaded the gun, and shot Geddling twice. Beardslee initially admitted shooting Geddling to put her out of her misery. He later claimed he thought she was already dead and had merely pretended to shoot her in order to demonstrate his involvement and impress Rutherford. Forensic evidence strongly suggested that Beardslee's shots had been to Geddling's head and had actually killed her.
Beardslee and Soria dropped Forrester off and went to Rutherford's place, where Benjamin was still being held. They told Benjamin that Geddling had been taken to a hospital. Shortly thereafter, Beardslee drove the four of them north to Marin County. They stopped on a deserted road. Beardslee and Soria wandered a short distance off after Rutherford had coaxed Benjamin from the car. Beardslee returned to find Rutherford strangling Benjamin with a wire. He thought he noticed a "pleading look" on her face and unsuccessfully tried to knock her out with a punch. He briefly took one end of the wire from Rutherford. After helping Rutherford drag Benjamin's body though the brush, Beardslee asked for Rutherford's knife, which he used to slit Benjamin's throat. Beardslee initially claimed he wanted to end her suffering. He later claimed he thought she was already dead when he cut her throat and was only acting out of fear of Rutherford. Forensic evidence strongly suggested that Benjamin died from the knife wound.
Geddling's body was discovered the next day, and police found Beardslee's phone number in Geddling's pocket. Beardslee initially denied any connection to Geddling. However, the next day he provided a detailed account and led the police to all the relevant evidence, including Benjamin's body.
Beardslee made a formal statement to police on April 26, 1981, and he was charged with both homicides on May 3. He had already told police he was on parole from a prior homicide in Missouri, and he was also charged with the special circumstance of a previous murder conviction. Douglas Gray, Beardslee's appointed counsel, felt Beardslee's prior homicide and complete confession put him in grave danger of the death penalty. Thus, he agreed to have Beardslee cooperate fully with the authorities against his co-defendants in order to generate mitigation at the penalty phase of the trial. Beardslee claims that Gray failed to inform him of Gray's intention to forgo the guilt phase.
Beardslee submitted to a lengthy interrogation by investigators on January 2, 1982. In late January, he testified as a prosecution witness at the preliminary hearing for Frank Rutherford. He later testified at a hearing for William Forrester. On several occasions, he answered extended questions about his own involvement in the California killings as well as questions about his prior homicide. According to his testimony, Beardslee met Laura Griffin in a Missouri bar in 1969 and accompanied her home. At some point in the evening he felt insulted. As a result, he eventually held Griffin's head underwater and stabbed her in the throat. Beardslee claimed he could not remember much about that night because he had been drinking.
Shortly after the Griffin murder, Beardslee confessed his involvement to a girlfriend, who referred him to clergy and eventually to a lawyer. His attorney took him to a county hospital for psychiatric counseling, instructing police officers not to question him. After the attorney had departed, the detectives engaged Beardslee in conversation about the killing and used the information they acquired to gather sufficient evidence about the crime. Beardslee's lawyer moved to suppress all evidence obtained as a result of this interrogation. However, the officer involved, Jack Patty, testified that he had obtained all relevant evidence from other sources. Beardslee's motion was denied.
The California prosecutor, Carl Holm, considered introducing this prior homicide as a special circumstance in the California case, and he sent two detectives to Missouri to gather additional evidence. When their report raised serious questions about constitutional violations by the Missouri officers, Holm called Officer Patty and secretly recorded an extended conversation about the case. Patty admitted that he had talked to Beardslee despite his lawyer's instructions, that he had obtained evidence as a direct result of the conversation, and that he lied about these facts at Beardslee's 1970 suppression hearing. Holm disclosed this information to defense counsel and decided not to introduce the conviction as evidence. However, Holm still planned to introduce both forensic evidence from the Missouri crime scene and Beardslee's confession of that killing from the Rutherford preliminary hearing.
As had been informally arranged between Gray and Holm, Beardslee's co-defendants were tried first. Soria pled guilty to second degree murder and received fifteen years. Forrester was acquitted of the Geddling killing. Rutherford was found guilty of first degree murder for the Benjamin killing and received a sentence of life without parole.
Contrary to Gray's expectations, on the eve of trial Beardslee insisted on going through with both the guilt and penalty phases. Beardslee later testified that he always "took it for granted" there would be a guilt phase. In an emergency motion to substitute counsel, Gray argued that he couldn't continue because he had spent the previous twenty-one months helping to generate evidence that would show mitigation but that also solidified Beardslee's guilt. Both Gray and Beardslee agreed that Beardslee would be satisfied to have Gray continue as counsel in the guilt phase, though Beardslee later challenged Gray's assistance as ineffective. The trial court allowed the substitution of counsel and also granted a continuance so that Beardslee's new counsel, John Balliet, could prepare for trial.
On October 18, 1983, a San Mateo county jury convicted Beardslee of two counts of first degree murder. The prosecutor had argued that the women were killed because they both had witnessed the shooting in Beardslee's apartment. The jury found the special circumstances of multiple murders and witness killing to be true for each homicide. Prior to the penalty phase, the trial court rejected a defense motion to exclude evidence relating to the Missouri killing after a lengthy hearing. At the penalty phase, extended excerpts from the Rutherford preliminary hearing were read into the record. On January 23, 1984, a second jury sentenced Beardslee to death for the murder of Patty Geddling and to life in prison for the murder of Stacy Benjamin. The trial court denied all post-conviction motions.
On direct appeal, the California Supreme Court affirmed Beardslee's conviction and sentence, but overturned the two witness killing special circumstances and one of the multiple murder circumstances. People v. Beardslee, 53 Cal.3d 68, 279 Cal.Rptr....
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