Arnie refuses to spare killer from execution

A man convicted of murdering two women over a drug deal was executed today after Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to spare his life.

Donald Beardslee, 61, was killed by lethal injection at a minute past midnight local time, heralding California's first execution in three years.

Describing the murders as "grisly and senseless killings" Schwarzenegger - star of the Terminator movies - said: "The state and federal courts have affirmed his conviction and death sentence, and nothing in his petition or the record of his case convinces me that he did not understand the gravity of his actions." Beardslee's lawyers claimed he suffered from mental illness aggravated by brain injuries when he killed Stacey Benjamin, 19, and Patty Geddling, 23, to avenge a botched $185 (?100) drug deal.

The Air Force veteran, who was out on parole at the time for the 1969 murder of a woman, confessed to both killings and was sentenced to death in 1984.

His Supreme Court appeals included claims the injection he is due to receive constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.