The State of California has executed a Missouri parolee who killed two people in California in 1981. Donald Beardslee served seven years of a 19-year sentence in a Missouri prison for killing a woman in St. Louis County. He was on parole from that prison term when he killed two women in a drug deal in California. The United States Supreme Court rejected, without comment, his claims that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. He’s the first sperson executed in California in almost three years.