Schwarzenegger allows execution

California prison officials put three-time murderer Donald Beardslee to death by lethal injection yesterday, in the first execution in the state for 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.

Beardslee, 61, had spent 20 years on death row since being sentenced to death in 1984 for killing two young women.

California, the nation's most populous state, has the largest death row population in the United States and perhaps the world, but it rarely administers the ultimate punishment. Lengthy appeals typically last two decades before an inmate is executed.

Five guards strapped a passive Beardslee to a table to administer lethal doses of three different chemicals, including potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.