Arnold Schwarzenegger and the United States Supreme Court turned back a plea for mercy for a man convicted of murder, clearing the way for California’s first execution in three years.

Donald Beardslee, 61, convicted of killing two women over a drug deal almost a quarter of a century ago, was given a lethal injection shortly after midnight (0800 GMT) at San Quentin State Prison.

Thirty government officials, relatives of his victims and journalists were in the room, separated from Beardslee by a glass partition with curtains.

Mr Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, and the Supreme Court turned down pleas for mercy on Tuesday.

"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 or that these heinous murders were wrong," Mr Schwarzenegger said in his written denial.

Beardslee’s lawyers claimed he suffered from brain damage when he killed Stacey Benjamin, 19, and Patty Geddling, 23, to avenge a soured $185 drug deal. His two appeals before the Supreme Court included claims that the lethal injection he is due to receive at San Quentin State Prison constitutes cruel-and-unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and that jurors were unfairly influenced when they rendered the death verdict. The court denied his appeals without comment.

Steven Lubliner, a defence lawyer, said killing Beardslee "accomplishes nothing. It demeans everyone."

About 200 people had gathered outside the gates at San Quentin State Prison to protest Beardslee’s execution, including Dorsey Nunn who served nearly 12 years in prison for first-degree murder. "I’ve been out here every time they get ready to execute somebody," he said after speaking to the crowd, which cheered and carried candles and signs that read 'Don’t Kill In Our Name' and 'Would Jesus Support the Death Penalty?' "People can change given the opportunity," Nunn said, adding that he’s a prime example. He now serves as programmr director for San Francisco-based Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.

Beardslee spent the hours leading up to the scheduled execution in a waiting room, where he could watch television, read and talk to his spiritual adviser. He turned down a last meal, only drinking some grapefruit juice.

Prosecutors have said Beardslee was not a passive, unwitting dupe when he committed the murders, as his lawyers claimed. They claimed Beardslee helped with the murder plot and sent his roommate to get duct tape to bind the victims before they even arrived at his apartment.

"We are not dealing here with a man who is so generally affected by his impairment that he cannot tell the difference between right and wrong," Mr Schwarzenegger said. The governor also brushed aside a claim that Beardslee should be spared because he is the only one of the three people convicted in the murders who received a death sentence.

The governor noted that Beardslee was the only one on parole at the time for another murder. Beardslee, a machinist, served seven years in Missouri for murdering a woman whom he met at a St. Louis bar and killed the same evening.

The governor later rejected a request for a 120-day delay of the execution sought by defence lawyers who wanted the time to reopen the case before a federal court.

The last execution in California was on January 29, 2002, when Stephen Wayne Anderson was put to death for shooting an 81-year-old woman in 1980. He was convicted of breaking into the woman’s home, shooting her in the face and then making himself a dish of noodles in her kitchen.

California has had ten executions since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1977. More than 600 men are on the state’s death row. A year ago, two and a half months after he took office, Mr Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Kevin Cooper, convicted in the hacking deaths of four people in 1983. Cooper later won a stay of execution from a federal appeals court.

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