Man it was a long time ago. According to this article it was in 1984. That was 5 years before I started working at Motorola in 1989.
I guess this is a good reason to say the death penalty doesn't work.
I have always been against the death penalty. Mistakes can be made and innocent people will be murdered by the government.
Of course in this case it as in all death penalty cases it is clearly a revenge killing by the government.
Nobody is going to be scared to commit a crime by the death penalty if it takes this long go carry out. If it takes 30 plus years to execute a person for crimes they committed that certainly will not scare people from committing crimes.
Also going years back to the murder I vaguly remember that the cops probably illegally searched the home of Donald Beaty.
Of course a crime by crooked cops doesn't justify the murder.
Ariz. inmate asks US high court to block execution
They argue that Donald Beaty was denied effective representation at key points in his case.
The appeal filed Friday on Beaty's behalf asks the justices to find that there's a constitutional right to effective representation in post-conviction proceedings in trial court.
Beaty's lawyers say lapses by an early post-trial defense attorney denied Beaty an opportunity to argue that mitigation evidence should have been presented during sentencing.
On another front, Beaty's lawyers have filed a lawsuit claiming that state officials are violating Arizona's public records law by withholding records on the acquisition on execution drugs.
Beaty was convicted in the 1984 rape and murder of 13-year-old Christy Ann Fornoff of Tempe.
Associated Press
Candlelight vigil set for Christy Ann Fornoff
Christy Ann Fornoff's murder in 1984 in Tempe changed life in the East Valley.
Posted: Friday, May 20, 2011 1:47 pm | Updated: 3:51 pm, Fri May 20, 2011.
By Mike Sakal, Tribune East Valley Tribune
The vigil will begin at 7 p.m. at Selleh Park, 2425 S. Los Feliz Drive, near Curry Elementary School, before moving on to Christy's childhood home on East Concorda Drive. The vigil will conclude in front of the apartment complex at 2045 S. McClintock Drive where she was killed on May 9, 1984 while collecting newspaper subscription payments for her Phoenix Gazette newspaper route.
Fornoff was abducted, sexually assaulted and suffocated to death by Donald Beaty, who was a maintenance supervisor at what was the Rock Point Apartments complex at the time.
Beaty, 56, who has been on death row since July, 1985, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at an Arizona Department of Corrections prison in Florence at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Suit accuses Arizona of violating public records law
Posted: Friday, May 20, 2011 3:55 pm
Suit accuses Arizona of violating public records law Associated Press | 0 comments
Federal public defenders have accused the Arizona Corrections Department of violating the state public records law by withholding records on the acquisition of execution drugs.
Lawyers representing Donald Beaty, who is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, need the records "in order to pursue appropriate remedies" to the "potentially unlawful behavior" of the department, according to a motion that accompanied the lawsuit.
The public defenders had asked for quick consideration of the lawsuit filed Thursday, but a judge on Friday denied that motion without comment.
Daniel Barr, a lawyer representing the defender office, said it wasn't clear what would happen next in the case.
The office's suit asked that the department be ordered to produce the requested records, which include communications with federal agencies and a customs broker. The defender's office, which represents death row inmates, contends that Arizona may have illegally imported at least one execution drug.
Department spokesman Barrett Marson said he was not familiar with the suit filed and could not immediately comment.
State officials have said previously they have acted legally in obtaining and using execution drugs.
Courts have permitted two Arizona executions since October despite defense lawyers' arguments that the state's supply of execution drugs may not work properly.
Beaty was convicted in the 1984 rape and murder of 13-year-old Christy Ann Fornoff. The girl was killed while she was collecting on her newspaper route at an apartment complex where Beaty lived and worked.
The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday refused to block Beaty's scheduled execution as it denied his appeal of a state trial judge's order turning away claims of ineffective representation in his sentencing and in later proceedings.
Arizona death row inmate loses Supreme Court appeal
May. 23, 2011 10:11 AM
Associated Press
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal in which an Arizona inmate facing a scheduled execution Wednesday challenged the death penalty.
The justices on Monday turned away without comment the appeal filed by Donald Beaty in March.
Beaty has another appeal pending with the U.S. Supreme Court - one filed last week by his attorneys on claims of ineffective legal representation early in his decades-long case.
His lawyers also are asking the state Supreme Court to withdraw his death warrant because justices of the state high court recently toured death row and met with prison officials to discuss execution scheduling and protocols.
Beaty was sentenced to death after being convicted in the murder of a 13-year-old newspaper carrier, Christy Ann Fornoff of Tempe.
Arizona murders Donald Beaty
SourceArizona inmate put to death by lethal injection
by JJ Hensley and Jim Walsh - May. 25, 2011 10:36 PM
The Arizona Republic
FLORENCE - An emotional Donald Beaty used his last words to apologize to the family of his victim, 13-year-old Christy Ann Fornoff, moments before he was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday at Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Beaty, 56, said, his lips quivering as he lay on the death gurney awaiting the injection of a lethal three-drug cocktail. "God will let you see her again."
Beaty was convicted of the 1984 murder in Tempe of the young Phoenix Gazette newspaper carrier. After he died, Fornoff's family could be seen hugging and consoling each other.
"We are here to bring closure to the loss of our beloved daughter and sister, Christy Ann Fornoff," the victim's mother, Carol, said in a statement she read after the execution. "Her life was not in vain. Even in death, she has brought light to the darkness of evil that surrounded her when she was murdered."
Beaty was pronounced dead at 7:38 p.m., more than nine hours after his execution had initially been scheduled. When the lethal drugs were injected, Beaty almost immediately appeared to go sleep, letting out a large yawn.
Beaty's execution had been delayed for most of the day Wednesday as his defense team tried to challenge the Arizona Department of Corrections' decision to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental in the state's execution-drug formula.
Eight hours of legal debate took place in three cities - Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco - before appeals were exhausted and final preparations were made for the execution.
In arguing for a stay, Beaty's attorneys said more time was needed to determine if the last-minute drug substitution, which was announced late Tuesday, would infringe on Beaty's constitutional rights or constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
They also suggested that corrections officials should have taken more time to train executioners in the use of pentobarbital, since it was not a part of the state's existing execution-drug protocol. One filing called the last-minute change "unconscionable."
Those arguments were first made before the Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday morning, but the state's high court rejected them several hours later after meeting on the matter behind closed doors. Rejections continued throughout the afternoon: first in U.S. District Court, then twice at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected two other legal arguments put forth to block the execution. Final decision
In the end, the courts recognized the state's right to substitute pentobarbital for thiopental. One judge noted during oral arguments that pentobarbital already had been reviewed by other courts and approved for executions.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, meanwhile, called the daylong delay a "slap in the face" to the Fornoff family.
By 6 p.m., however, prison officials were cleared to proceed with the execution after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider further appeals. Disappearance
Fornoff disappeared on the evening of May 9, 1984, while collecting money on her newspaper-delivery route at a Tempe apartment complex. Her mother, who was accompanying her, had let her out of her sight just long enough to chat with a neighbor, and within hours, police were combing the complex with canine units as Fornoff's parents and neighbors knocked on doors.
Two days later, Beaty, the complex's maintenance man, was seen standing over Fornoff's body, which had been wrapped in a sheet and laid next to a garbage bin. Beaty told the man who saw him that he had just found the body and had already called police.
But his story didn't add up. He had not called police when he said he did, for example. He was arrested May 22, 1984, and charged with murder and sexual assault.
Evidence linked Beaty to the crime. Fornoff's vomit was found in his closet, along with hairs that matched hairs found on the body.
Beaty's first trial ended in a hung jury, but during his second trial, prosecutors learned that a psychiatrist had been overheard saying that Beaty had confessed to the murder. Prosecutors took the matter to the Arizona Court of Appeals to overrule the doctor-patient privilege that would ordinarily attach to conversations between Beaty and the psychiatrist. The doctor was ordered to testify.
On the stand, he testified that Beaty had not intended to kill the girl, but had put his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams and she suffocated on her own vomit. Beaty was found guilty and sentenced to death. Finally at peace
Beaty was fed a last meal Tuesday night of a chimichanga, a double cheeseburger with fries, ice cream and a Diet Pepsi.
Afterward, he was transported from the state's death row at the Eyman Complex to a holding cell at ASPC-Florence. He wasn't taken to the death chamber to prepare for his lethal injection until early Wednesday evening.
After Beaty was pronounced dead, the Fornoff family stood together before the media and said they felt at peace with the outcome. But the Fornoffs also said that, in hindsight, they do not condone the death penalty. When their daughter was murdered, a sentence of life without parole was not a legal option.
"We pray for the family of Donald Beaty, as they too have suffered through the years," Carol Fornoff said.
FDA scores illegal drugs to be used in a murder????
Hmmm ... So the FDA is involved with smuggling illegal drugs??? Of course if you or me were involved in smuggling illegal drugs we would go to prison. I doubt if the dope peddlers at the FDA will even be arrested, much less get punished.And of course if you or me were involved in scoring illegal drugs to be used in a murder, we would also be charges with some form of murder. Will the FDA bureaucrats who helped get the drugs for this murder be charged with murder? I doubt it.
Of course that's how our government hypocrites operate. One set of rules for us and a second for our royal rulers.
Judge: FDA allowed state to illegally gain execution drug
by Michael Kiefer - Mar. 27, 2012 11:55 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday morning found that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration violated the law by allowing Arizona and other states to bypass regulations while importing unapproved drugs to carry out executions by lethal injection.
The ruling was made in a lawsuit filed in the name of Donald Beaty, an Arizona Death Row inmate who was executed last year.
The drug sodium thiopental, a short-acting anesthesia, that was used in executions. became unavailable in mid-2010 because its sole U.S. manufacturer had ceased production. That fall, The Arizona Republic first reported that Arizona corrections officials had obtained the drug from a distributor in London, although FDA officials were saying that it was not possible to import the drug; such exports also violated Bristish law and were shut down shortly afterward. In late December 2010, FDA officials told The Republic that it would exercise "enforcement discretion" on the matter.
E-mails obtained through Freedom of Information requests later showed that FDA officials had allowed the shipments. In April 2011, the drug was seized from some states by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and in June 2011, Arizona was told it could not use its supply, one day before Beaty's execution. Beaty was executed using a different drug.
In his ruling Tuesday, Judge Richard Leon of the District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote, "In the final analysis, the FDA appears to be simply wrapping itself in the flag of law enforcement discretion to justify its authority and masquerade an otherwise seemingly callous indifference to the health consequences of those imminently facing the executioner's needle. How utterly disappointing!"
Dale Baich of the Federal Public Defender's Office in Phoenix said, "The states that have imported non-FDA approved drugs are now on notice that those drugs are illegal."