Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. To keep creating
new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help
the Murderpedia project stay alive. We have many
plans and enthusiasm
to keep expanding and making Murderpedia a better site, but we really
need your help for this. Thank you very much in advance.
Stephen Wayne
ANDERSON
Classification:
Serial killer
Characteristics: Robbery
- Contract killings
Number of victims: 8
Date of murder: 1970's - 1980
Date
of arrest:
May 26,
1980
Date of birth: July
8,
1953
Victims profile: Elizabeth
Lyman, 81 / Male (inmate) / ???
Method of murder: Shooting
Location: Nevada/Utah/California, USA
Status: Executed
by lethal injection in California on January
29, 2002
Summary:
Elizabeth Lyman was an 81-year-old retired piano teacher, and
lived by herself in Bloomington, San Bernardino County.
About an hour after midnight on Monday, May 26, 1980, Anderson,
a 26-year-old escapee from Utah State Prison, broke into her
home, and cut her telephone line with a knife. He shot her in
the face from a distance of between eight and 20 inches with his
.45 caliber handgun as she lay in her bed.
Anderson then covered her body with a blanket, recovered the
expelled casing from the hollow-point bullet that killed her,
and ransacked her house for money. He found less than $100.
Anderson next sat down in Mrs. Lyman’s kitchen to eat a dinner
of noodles and eggs. His meal was interrupted, however, by
sheriff’s deputies called to the scene by a suspicious neighbor
who had been awakened by barking dogs and had seen Anderson in
Mrs. Lyman’s house through a window. Anderson confessed to the
murder.
Final Meal:
Two (2) grilled cheese sandwiches (American cheese); One (1)
pint of cottage cheese (plain, no fruit); Hominy/corn mixture
(regular hominy, regular corn); One (1) piece of peach pie; One
(1) pint of chocolate chip ice cream; Radishes.
Final Words:
None.
ClarkProsecutor.org
California Department of
Corrections
SUMMARY:
Stephen Wayne Anderson was convicted of one
count of first-degree murder with special circumstances and one
count of residential burglary in the May 26, 1980 murder of
Elizabeth Lyman. A San Bernardino County jury sentenced Anderson
to death on July 24, 1981.
Elizabeth Lyman was an 81-year-old retired
piano teacher, and lived by herself in Bloomington, San
Bernardino County. About an hour after midnight on Monday, May
26, 1980, Anderson, a 26-year-old escapee from Utah State Prison,
broke into her home, and cut her telephone line with a knife,
believing no one was at home.
He was startled when she woke up
in her bed. He shot her in the face from a distance of between
eight and 20 inches with his .45 caliber handgun as she lay in
her bed.
Anderson then covered her body with a blanket,
recovered the expelled casing from the hollowpoint bullet that
killed her, and ransacked her house for money. He found less
than $100.
Anderson next sat down in Mrs. Lyman’s
kitchen to eat a dinner of noodles and eggs. His meal was
interrupted, however, by sheriff’s deputies called to the scene
by a suspicious neighbor who had been awakened by barking dogs
and had seen Anderson in Mrs. Lyman’s house through a window.
The deputies arrested Anderson at 3:47 a.m., and took him to the
San Bernardino Sheriff’s Substation in Fontana.
Anderson was an escapee from Utah State
Prison at the time of Mrs. Lyman’s death. He escaped on Nov. 24,
1979, and had been incarcerated for one count of aggravated
burglary in 1971 and three counts of aggravated burglary in
1973.
While incarcerated at Utah State Prison, Anderson murdered
an inmate, assaulted another inmate, and assaulted a
correctional officer. Anderson also admitted to six other
contract killings in Las Vegas, Nevada that happened prior to
the crime for which he received a death sentence.
While incarcerated in the California
Department of Corrections, Anderson received CDC 115s (Rule
Violation Report). He assaulted another inmate in 1987, used
force and violence in 1985, and used force and violence while
fighting in 1984.
LAST MEAL REQUEST, JANUARY 28, 2002:
Condemned inmate Stephen Wayne Anderson has
selected the following for his last meal: Two (2) grilled cheese
sandwiches (American cheese); One (1) pint of cottage cheese (plain,
no fruit); Hominy/corn mixture (regular hominy, regular corn);
One (1) piece of peach pie; One (1) pint of chocolate chip ice
cream; Radishes. It should be noted that inmate Anderson did not
request any special food items for his scheduled visits, January
24-28, 2002.
EXECUTION:
At 12:18 a.m., January 29, 2002, the
execution by lethal injection of Stephen Wayne Anderson began in
San Quentin State Prison's execution chamber. He was pronounced
dead at 12:30 a.m. When asked by the Warden if he had any last
words, Mr. Anderson was very adamant that he did not.
ProDeathPenalty.com
Stephen Wayne Anderson was convicted of one
count of first-degree murder and one count of residential
burglary in the May 26, 1980 murder of Elizabeth Lyman.
A San
Bernardino County jury sentenced Anderson to death on July 24,
1981. Elizabeth Lyman was an 81-year-old retired piano teacher,
and lived by herself in Bloomington, San Bernardino County.
About an hour after midnight on Monday, May 26, 1980, Anderson,
a 26-year-old escapee from Utah State Prison, broke into her
home, and cut her telephone line with a knife. He shot her in
the face from a distance of between eight and 20 inches with his
.45 caliber handgun as she lay in her bed.
Anderson then covered
her body with a blanket, recovered the expelled casing from the
hollow-point bullet that killed her, and ransacked her house for
money. He found less than $100.
Anderson next sat down in Mrs.
Lyman’s kitchen to eat a dinner of noodles and eggs. His meal
was interrupted, however, by sheriff’s deputies called to the
scene by a suspicious neighbor who had been awakened by barking
dogs and had seen Anderson in Mrs. Lyman’s house through a
window.
California- Execution of
Stephen Wayne Anderson
San Francisco Chronicle
January 29,
2002
Drifter who killed 81-year-old woman executed
early Tuesday. With a whispered "I love you," from his lawyer,
Stephen Wayne Anderson was put to death early Tuesday for
murdering an elderly widow 22 years ago. Anderson died almost
entirely surrounded by strangers. No relatives of his victim or
members of his own family attended.
Anderson, 48, was pronounced dead from a
lethal injection at 12:30 a.m. PST after his attorneys lost a
last-ditch battle for the life of the man they said had redeemed
himself on death row, learning Latin and writing poems of
repentance. As Anderson was lying on the gurney in the death
chamber, his public defender, Margo Rocconi, mouthed the words
"I love you" 3 times to the condemned man. Witnesses said he
responded by mouthing, "Thank you."
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt the
execution late Monday night. The nation's highest court voted
8-0, with Justice Antonin Scalia not participating, to reject
Anderson's request for a stay of execution and a request to
rehear the case. Anderson's defenders had asked Gov. Gray Davis
to spare his life, saying he didn't get a fair trial because of
a bad lawyer and noting that some family members of the victim
did not support the death penalty.
Expecting clemency to be
denied -- the last California governor to grant clemency was
Ronald Reagan in 1967 -- the defense team unsuccessfully waged a
separate legal battle arguing that Davis' tough-on-crime
platform locked him into an intractable position on clemency. On
Monday, Anderson's lawyers filed a new appeal claiming Davis'
34-page opinion showed his bias. That argument also was rejected
by the courts.
Anderson was sentenced to die for killing
Elizabeth Lyman in the early hours of Memorial Day 1980.
Prosecutors said Anderson, who had escaped from a Utah prison
some months earlier, broke into Lyman's house in Bloomington, a
small town in Southern California, and shot her as she sat up in
bed.
Anderson ransacked the house, finding $112, and then made
himself at home, watching television in her living room and
cooking himself a meal of noodles, according to court records.
Prosecutors portrayed Anderson as a callous killer with a long
criminal record that included confessions to 2 killings in Utah,
the stabbing of a fellow inmate and the contract killing of
another man. Anderson also confessed to 6 contract hits in
Nevada, although it wasn't clear those killings really happened.
His defenders gave a different version. They
said Anderson was shaped by a brutal upbringing. They also
contended his court-appointed lawyer did a terrible job,
failingn to bring out the mitigating circumstances of Anderson's
harsh childhood. The death sentences of 2 other clients of
Anderson's trial lawyer, the late S. Donald Ames, were
overturned because of incompetent representation.
But the courts
ruled Anderson got an adequate defense. Anderson's new lawyers
also said the Utah confessions, which were used to bolster the
death penalty case against him, should have been suppressed
because officials held him too long before he was arraigned.
Anderson did not make a final statement
Tuesday morning. The lethal mix of chemicals began running into
his veins at 12:17 a.m., and he died 13 minutes later. About 200
death penalty opponents braved near-freezing temperatures to
hold a candlelight vigil outside San Quentin on Monday night,
sipping hot chocolate and huddling in blankets to stay warm.
Lyle Grosjean, an Episcopal priest from Santa Cruz, was among 15
people who walked from San Francisco to San Quentin to protest
capital punishment. "We walk 25 miles to show our commitment
that we're against the death penalty. Punishment isn't the
answer. Compassion is," Grosjean said. "We're unequivocally
opposed to the death penalty in all cases, guilty or innocent."
Beyond the legal issues, Anderson's
supporters said his writings showed a spirit worth saving. In
prison, Anderson had written a play, started a novel, and
published a number of poems. One, "I Miss Them All," begins, "I
miss leaves whispering/softly through the evening haze;/little
conversations upon the breeze,/rustling giggles and hush, child,
hush."
Anderson becomes the 1st condemned inmate to
be put to death this year in California and the 10th overall
since the state resumed capital punishment in 1992. Anderson
becomes the 5th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
the USA and the 754th overall since America resumed executions
on January 17, 1977.
Death Penalty Focus
ACTION ALERT - IMPENDING CALIFORNIA EXECUTION
- JANUARY 29, 2002
Gov. Gray Davis denied clemency for Stephen
Anderson on Saturday, January 26, 2002.
BACKGROUND
Stephen Wayne Anderson, 48, was executed at
San Quentin State Prison on January 29, 2002 at 12:01am for the
1980 murder of Elizabeth Lyman. Anderson was one of 607 people
on California's death row. The work of Anderson's court-appointed
trial lawyer, Don Ames, was previously ruled so deficient that
two other men he represented who were sent to death row had
their sentences voided by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
On December 21, 2001, the 9th Circuit denied
Anderson's request for a rehearing of his appeal, with a dissent
from six of the judges in which they said, "… [Anderson's] death
sentence may well have been imposed, not because of the crime
that he committed, but because of the incompetence of an
attorney with little integrity and a pattern of ineffective
performance in capital cases."
There is also strong evidence of police
misconduct, which has been a consistent problem in San
Bernardino County. Members of the victim's family strongly
oppose the execution.
Stephen Anderson Poetry
I Miss Them All
I miss leaves whispering
softly through the evening haze;
little conversations upon the breeze,
rustling giggles and hush, child, hush.
I miss fresh cut summer grass,
turned wet and vibrant green; ah, yes,
I miss those bugs annoying my nose, my eyes,
my ears: I miss cursing at their taunts.
I miss catching scent of honeysuckle,
lifted warm on gentlest breeze; and the sound
of distant children playing at dusk,
called for supper but reluctant to go.
I miss the harsh bite of wood smoke
drifting through the heavy autumn air; and the scent
of dead things burned against obscure horizons,
rising upwards into a thousand sunset colors.
I miss listening to the sounds of night,
crickets chirping and birds calling each other,
I miss watching life unfold and hearing echoes
continuing through winter's cold.
I miss so much living behind these walls,
cloistered away from the world beyond: but sometimes
I hear the rain across the roof, and
smell it upon the sidewalks cleaned.
I miss the sensation of all things purified,
of life free of all its burdens; and I miss
just living for sunsets and the moon
and those things lost, hush...child, hush.
Stephen Wayne Anderson - 25 September 2000
National Coalition to
Abolish the Death Penalty
California - Stephen Anderson
Scheduled Execution Date and Time: 1/29/02
3:01 AM EST
Stephen Anderson is scheduled to be executed
on Jan. 29 in California for the murder of Elizabeth Lyman.
Since reinstatement California has only executed nine people,
despite having the largest death row in the United States.
In 1985 Anderson’s death sentence was vacated
by the California Supreme Court on the grounds that he had not
intended to kill his victim during the robbery- a circumstance
required by law in California for capital crimes. However, due
to the circumstances of California’s Supreme Court, when
different justices were elected in 1986 they voted to reinstate
Anderson’s death sentence.
Like a handful of other states, voters in
California elect Supreme Court Justices.These Justices often are
elected while death row inmates are pursuing their appeals-
leading to the danger that their cases may be politicized.
Stephen Anderson was unlucky enough to be facing appeal when
conservative judges were elected to the Court. Please write to
Gov. Davis of California to let him know that the death penalty
is not a fairly applied form of justice in his state.
Poet Laureate of America's Damned
by Bell
Gale Chevigny
PEN American Center
"BORN IN St. Louis and raised in New Mexico,"
prize-winning poet Stephen Wayne Anderson wrote to me four years
ago, "I was passing through California when I shot someone
during an $80 bungled burglary and found myself a permanent
resident. That residency grows short; my lease is coming due."
Anderson's eviction, by lethal injection, is scheduled for one
minute after midnight. A national campaign has been under way to
ask Gov. Gray Davis for clemency, but the governor denied it on
Saturday. Chances are now slim for any last-minute reprieve.
Anderson's case is strong. He is a thoroughly
rehabilitated man. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty
in California in 1977, there has not been such strong support
for clemency from a victim's family. Surviving relatives of 81-year-old
Elizabeth Lyman have said that they do not want or need his
execution.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has
overturned two other capital convictions on the grounds that
defense attorney S. Donald Ames, Anderson's trial counsel, was
incompetent. Ames failed to present to the jurors the mitigating
circumstances of Anderson's extraordinarily troubled childhood;
his parents were mentally disturbed and his father regularly
beat him to within an inch of his life.
Moreover, his murder
occurred during a burglary of a house; Anderson heard a sound
and fired into the dark, instantly killing a woman. He did not
flee. Rather he opened the curtains, turned on all the house
lights and waited three hours for the police to arrive,
according to his attorneys. Confessing his crime to the police,
he said that he hoped California has a death penalty. At his
trial, he said of his victim, "She didn't deserve that. I was
very wrong."
Although Anderson confessed to two other
murders, he was never convicted of them. And according to his
attorneys, he later retracted one and insisted that the other
was in self-defense. Relatives of the victim in the alleged
self- defense case have also argued against Anderson's
execution.
My argument for Anderson's life springs from
personal experience. Like other writers on the prison committee
of the PEN (Poets, Essayists and Novelists) American Center, I
know how dramatically many prisoners grow while behind bars.
From the hundreds of manuscripts submitted to our contest every
year, we get a privileged glimpse of some of the most serious
writing in the country. Editing a collection of the best work of
51 PEN prison-writing contest winners, I asked the authors what
motivates them. Fiction writer Susan Rosenberg replied, "Writing
forces me to remain conscious of the suffering around me and to
resist getting numb to it. I write to keep my heart open, to
keep pumping fresh red blood."
Anderson would say the same, although the
threat of death puts the task of remaining human to the harshest
test. He wrote me about the more than 500 men awaiting court
decisions on California's Death Row: "We carry imminent
destruction with us constantly. We eat, sleep and breathe
death." But writing, he said another time, offers the experience
of "coming out of an emotional desert into an exciting whirlwind
of expression and release." And, again, "A sentence of death
made me realize the value of life, and of living." After a
period of despair, Anderson undertook to educate himself. He
read everything he could and even studied Latin. Now, he writes;
his thirst to read is so great that "I even dream of libraries."
He rises at midnight to read and write in
relative quiet. The week before his scheduled execution, he was
trying to complete a novel. "These are the graves of the
executed ones." So begins "Conversations with the Dead," which
took first prize for poetry in the 1990 PEN contest.
Contemplating San Quentin's "phantom land," its "horizon of
tombstones," Anderson writes with unflinching remorse of murder
victims: "stolen from life, becoming but candles lit by children,
who became adults before childhood lived . . ."
Living on Death Row for 20 years, Anderson
has seen some men released; others walk to their death. He is a
connoisseur of despair, the poet laureate of America's damned.
He longs for an anthology of condemned prisoners' writing. His
own gift of compassion may be the greatest reward for his
personal transformation. In a recent poem, he wrote: Over these
incarcerated years, I have heard men wail in the night, mourning
misplaced lives and lost souls . . ." The poem concludes: "Nothing
seems as forlorn as the profound crying, of an unseen man
weeping in solitude."
Anderson has had no disciplinary problems for
15 years. No victims' relatives cry for his blood. The majority
of Californians now support life without parole instead of the
death penalty. Nationally, the moratorium movement is growing;
this is an opportunity for the Golden State to join it.
Inmates petition regarding clemency denied
KPIX.com
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) - An inmate who is
scheduled to be executed next week for a 1980 murder lost an
appeal to a federal circuit court in San Francisco today to have
Gov. Davis removed from considering his clemency petition. The
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Stephen Anderson had not
presented any evidence or information suggesting that Davis
would not be fair in judging the petition.
Anderson, 48, is scheduled to be put to death
by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison on Jan. 29 for
murdering a retired piano teacher at her home in San Bernardino
County.
He claims in a lawsuit filed Jan. 14 that
Davis has a blanket policy of denying leniency to murderers
seeking clemency or parole. The suit seeks a court order
transferring his clemency petition from Davis to Lt.Gov Cruz
Bustamante and delaying the execution while the petition is
considered. The appeals court upheld a ruling in which U.S.
District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco last week declined
to grant those orders.
Harry Simon, a deputy federal public defender
in Los Angeles, said Anderson's lawyers are preparing an appeal
to the U.S. Supreme Court. The clemency petition asks to have
Anderson's sentence changed from death to life in prison without
parole. Byron Tucker, a spokesman for the governor, said this
evening that Davis is reviewing the petition and has not set a
date for reaching a decision on the clemency bid.
San Bernardino County
District Attorney
NEWS RELEASE - For Immediate Release - DENNIS
L. STOUT, District Attorney
Contact person: Deputy District Attorney
David Whitney
Date: December 12, 2001
Execution Date Set - San Bernardino, CA -
Today, Judge Bob Krug set an execution date of January 29, 2002,
for convicted murderer Stephen Wayne Anderson, 47. The execution
will take place at San Quentin Prison. In 1980, Anderson escaped
from a Utah prison and murdered an 81-year-old Bloomington woman,
Elizabeth Lyman, after she interrupted a burglary. Anderson was
sentenced to death in 1981, but the penalty was reversed. He was
sentenced to death a second time in 1986.
Anderson will be the first person to be
executed in San Bernardino County since the new death penalty
statute was enacted in 1977.
Execution Date Set for Drifter Who Ate
Macaroni While Victim Died
The Californian North
County Times
December 13,
2001
SAN BERNARDINO (AP) ---- An execution date
was set Wednesday for a San Bernardino County drifter who ate
macaroni while his victim bled to death. Stephen Wayne Anderson
has exhausted his appeals and was given a Jan. 29 execution date
by San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Bob Krug. Anderson,
48, was convicted of killing 81-year-old Elizabeth Lyman.
Anderson shot the former piano teacher in the face before
burglarizing her Bloomington home on Memorial Day in 1980.
Anderson watched television in her living
room and ate macaroni he fixed himself as the woman bled to
death. In a taped confession, Anderson said he shot Lyman
because she surprised him after he broke into her house looking
for money. Anderson was an escaped convict at the time from a
Utah prison, where he had been serving a sentence for another
burglary.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the
U.S. Supreme Court both rejected Anderson's final appeals last
month. He had argued that he received ineffective legal
assistance during his trial from Donald Ames, who died last year.
A federal appeals court has converted two death sentences to
life terms because of Ames' poor representations in other cases,
but upheld Anderson's death sentence. Anderson's new lawyers
argued unsuccessfully that Ames did not line up witnesses in an
attempt to persuade the jury to spare Anderson's life.
Anderson is set to become the 10th inmate
executed in California since voters reinstated capital
punishment in 1978. He can choose either lethal injection or the
gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison, where he is housed. He
is one of more than 600 condemned inmates in California.
State Murder in California
By Jackie
Thomason - Oaktown Blogger
February 3, 2002
It rained off and on
during the day on Monday, January 28th, and there were
threatening clouds when I left home around 8pm. By the time I
had parked the car and walked to the quaint Village of San
Quentin, the sky had cleared. The full moon, which earlier in
the day hung like a stage prop over the East Bay hills, was now
high in the sky.
The Village is far from city lights so that
the stars shone brightly enough that I could recognize the Big
Dipper and Orion.On the way to the prison gates I stopped
briefly at a small public access way to the beach. This is one
place where the view of the Bay Bridge isn't dominated by the
San Francisco skyline. The waves lapping gently against the
shore belied the violent act planned for 12:01 on the next
morning. Some of the thousand or so people present to protest
the murder had been at every execution since California began
using the death penalty again in 1992. They had come three times
for Jaturun Siripongs whose appeals had twice delayed his
execution at the last minute.
This was my first time at a San Quentin vigil.
I had opposed the death penalty, but was reluctant to make that
a focus of my political action. The crimes involved were usually
extraordinarily cruel and typically were committed against women
and children. My friend Tory, an anti-death penalty activist,
and I had discussed this many times. "Not in my name," she would
say in response to my demurs. Change sometimes happens strangely.
I remember the feeling I had when my attitude towards activism
on this issue changed. I was listening to an interview with a
death row inmate on KPFA. This was one of those difficult cases
in which the crime was horrible, the victim was a woman, and the
inmate was undoubtedly guilty. I don't remember the details of
the crime or of the injustice in the court. I do remember the
feeling I had, a shifting almost physical in nature. I knew then
what Tory meant when she said "Not in my name."
I worked security at the vigil, but in fact
there were no pro-death penalty protestors near the prison
gates. My friends tell me that this has been a major change
since the days when there were confrontations. We kept watch on
one man known to be a heckler and on two men who seemed
suspicious but whom we thought to be undercover cops (which they
later told me they were). As midnight approached the crowd
became quieter.
The political speeches turned to more personal
statements by families of victims. And then to religious
statements, all by Christians. There was a large contingent of
people carrying mass manufactured white crosses. I found their
presence disturbing. Coalitions make strange bedfellows, as
these folks also carried signs with an anti-abortion message.
Finally a Native American contingent began a
heartbeat drumming and singing. This was an important part of
the event not only for its moving effect on the crowd but
because the drumming could be heard on death row, letting the
people there know that we were outside opposing their murder by
the State of Callifornia. I stood by the bay listening to and
feeling the drum. I've never understood why Christians bow their
heads when they pray. I watched the lights of the Bay Bridge
twinkle and lifted my fact to look up at the moon which seemed
to be racing across the sky. The cold began to get into my bones
and I noted a layer of ice on cars parked nearby.
Around 1am there came an announcement that
Stephen Wayne Anderson was murdered by the State of California
at 12:32 am on January 29,2002. We gathered our things and
walked with cold-stiffened joints back to our cars. I drove home
and went to bed where I after a long time I finally fell asleep
and dreamed bad dreams.
Bard of Death Row Executed
California Governor Rejects Pleas for
Clemency for Convicted Killer Who Wrote Award-Winning Verse
By Oliver Burkeman in New York.
The Guardian Unlimited
Network
Wednesday January 30, 2002
"I was passing
through California when I shot someone during a bungled burglary,
and found myself a permanent resident," Stephen Wayne Anderson
wrote to his friend and editor, Bell Chevigny, in 1998. "That
residency grows short; my lease is coming due." Anderson was a
homeless fugitive when he shot and killed an 81-year-old retired
piano teacher, Elizabeth Lyman, at her rural California home in
1980. Once captured, he confessed to another killing of a fellow
inmate during an earlier jail sentence. By the time he was
executed by lethal injection at San Quentin prison shortly after
midnight yesterday - the 10th person to be executed in
California since the death penalty was reintroduced there a
quarter of a century ago - he was a prize-winning poet and
playwright.
A coalition of writers and human-rights
activists had fought a long campaign to prove that Anderson had
been fully rehabilitated, and that but for an incompetent
defence attorney he would never have been sentenced to death in
the first place. But a last-minute appeal for clemency by Pen,
the international writers' group, was rejected by the governor
of California, Gray Davis, who is on record as objecting in
principle to granting clemency in death penalty cases. "I feel
very sad and very angry and very ashamed," said Ms Chevigny, a
former professor at the State University of New York, and the
editor who first included Anderson's poetry in a published
anthology. "This was a totally unsought death in so many ways;
both victims' families had said they did not want nor need the
death penalty, and more than half the population of California
opposes the penalty. The governor has ignored the will of his
voters."
Anderson's poetry won two prestigious Pen
awards for prison writing, and formed the basis of the off-Broadway
play Lament From Death Row. His work, Ms Chevigny said, "struck
me as very different to the stereotype of prison writ ing it was
so powerful, and it bore such a witness to this underground life
of our country - I was taken with the degree to which he had
come to rest emotionally. At one point, he wrote to me that it
was too bad he was only learning the meaning of life just as he
was about to lose it."
Anderson never denied shooting Lyman in the
face during a robbery in what he thought was an empty house.
Afterwards, he told his lawyers, he turned on all the lights in
the house, sat down at the kitchen table and waited for the
police to arrive. "I was very wrong," he told the jury at his
trial. His sentence was upheld on appeal, but in a dissenting
opinion, one judge called Anderson's state-provided defence
attorney, Donald Ames, who is now dead, "deceptive,
untrustworthy and disloyal to his capital clients" and said the
death penalty "may well have been imposed, not because of the
crime that [Anderson] committed, but because of the incompetence
of an attorney with little integrity and a pattern of
ineffective performance in capital cases".
In an appeal in a separate case, Ames's
daughters testified against him, accusing him of physical and
psychological abuse and saying he often made racist comments
about his clients. "This was a man who had no idea what was
required to properly prepare for a capital case," Donald Ayoob,
a public defender who worked on the case, told the newspaper LA
Weekly. "When it comes to the shoddy representation that capital
defendants get at trial, Don Ames was a poster boy."
But Governor Davis said he had reviewed the
evidence and was convinced of Anderson's guilt. "There is no
dispute that Mr Anderson, with an IQ of 136, is an extremely
intelligent man. But his intelligence, ironically, makes the
brutality and indifference of his crimes all the more
reprehensible," he said in a statement. Anderson's own
background of physical abuse at the hands of his father, Ms
Chevigny said, had never been properly put before a court. "His
poems showed that even the most brutalised person can rediscover
who he or she is through imagination and thought," she said.
Condemned cell poem
Extracts from Conversations with the Dead,
written at San Quentin in 1990, taken from Doing Time: 25 Years
of Prison Writing - A Pen American Centre Prize Anthology
"These are the graves of the executed ones,"/
he announced with a sombre, indifferent/kind of respect / and
yet later, in quiet reflection,/ I understood his tone came out
of/that secret reservoir of the soul which knows/ "I, too, could
end up as forgotten dust;/ I, too, might die for nothing."
Often now I think back upon my journey/
through that phantom land: a land caught/ like evening haze at
dusk, soon to perish/ into the gathering darkness of night/ but,
for one brief moment, beyond time. I recall those I, too, have
slain:/ those by my wrath seized, stolen from life,/ becoming
but candles lit by children/ who became adults before childhood
lived.
"These are the executed ones," he stated,
eyes/ small sparks, and then was gone, dissolving/ into the
umbra arts of night,/ leaving but those sparks which smoulder in
my soul,/ like candles surrounding the powerless and/ charred
Virgin's image in a chapel/ "These are the executed ones," he
announced,/ studying a horizon of tombstones. "Pray for them /
and for those to come."
Condemned Murderer Executed at San Quentin
for 1980 Slaying
Stephen Anderson Killed Woman, 81, In Her Home
By Kevin Fagan, Pamela Podger, Harriet Chiang.
SFGATE.com
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, January
29, 2002 - Stephen Wayne Anderson was put to death at San
Quentin State Prison early this morning, 22 years after he
fatally shot an 81-year-old San Bernardino County woman during a
burglary and then fixed himself some noodles in her kitchen.
Anderson, 48, who became a writer and poet
while on Death Row, was led into the prison's apple-green death
chamber and strapped onto a padded gurney. As he lay with his
arms and legs secured, a lethal chemical mix was pumped into his
veins, rendering him unconscious, stopping his breathing and,
finally, paralyzing his heart. Anderson was the 10th man to be
put to death in California since executions resumed in 1992
following a 25-year hiatus.
The inmate spent his final hours alone, while
his attorneys made a desperate attempt to save his life, arguing
that the condemned man had no chance for clemency because Gov.
Gray Davis was predisposed to deny any plea for mercy. But each
court ruled against him, and the execution remained on course.
He lost his final appeal last night before the U.S. Supreme
Court. The only witnesses he asked to be at the execution were
his two attorneys and the psychologist who testified for him
during his trial. Earlier in the day, his federal public
defender, Margo Rocconi, described him as calm. "He's not
holding out hope, so it will be easier for him," she said.
PROTESTERS GATHER OUTSIDE
About 230 demonstrators gathered outside the
prison, protesting the execution. After he was pronounced dead,
his two lawyers, Rocconi and Robert Horwitz, released a
statement calling him "the poet laureate of the condemned." "He
still had so much more to contribute to the world," they said. "We
will miss him greatly." The condemned man had few friends or
relatives, living virtually a solitary life behind bars. But he
left an unusual legacy, having written thousands of poems and
short stories and several novels during his 20 years on death
row. He won national prison writing awards for his work and had
a play performed off-Broadway, drawing praise for his compassion
and his grasp of the human condition. In the days leading up to
his death, he completed a short story called "Laughing Water."
But prosecutors say he will be remembered as
a cold-blooded killer who committed a heinous crime on a
helpless victim. On May 26, 1980, shortly after 1 a.m., Anderson,
who had escaped from Utah State Prison, broke into the home of
Elizabeth Lyman, an 81-year-old retired piano teacher who lived
in Bloomington (San Bernardino County). He ransacked the home
and found $112. When he entered the bedroom, Lyman abruptly sat
up in bed and screamed. He fired a shot at close range, striking
her in the face. After covering her with a sheet, he went to the
kitchen, made himself a bowl of noodles and sat down to watch
some television.
EVIDENCE OF OTHER KILLINGS
Prosecutors say Lyman's murder was the latest
homicide by a brutal killer. During his trial, Anderson admitted
stabbing to death a fellow inmate in the prison kitchen while at
Utah State Prison. He also admitted to investigators that after
his escape from prison he had been paid $1,000 to shoot to death
a man suspected of being a drug informant, using the same .45-caliber
revolver that was used to kill Lyman. He later recanted the
confession. In 1981, he was sentenced to die after a jury found
him guilty of burglary and murdering Lyman.
In an attempt to save his life, his defense
lawyers focused on his trial attorney, S. Donald Ames. The
lawyer, who died in 1999, never talked to Anderson outside of
court, contacted only one relative and put on virtually no case
during the penalty phase in which Anderson ultimately was
sentenced to die. Two of Ames' other clients had death sentences
overturned because of the lawyer's ineffective representation.
But each court denied Anderson's appeal. His attorneys also made
an unsuccessful attempt to disqualify Gov. Davis from deciding
Anderson's clemency request because they said Davis is biased,
having rejected all three previous clemency requests from
condemned inmates.
SUPPORT FROM VICTIM'S FAMILY
The inmate's friends and defenders had argued
that after a childhood of abuse and neglect, the hardened
criminal had changed within the controlled confines of prison,
finding a poetic voice and remorse for his crimes. Anderson
received support from Lyman's daughters -- as well as the slain
Utah inmate's mother -- who said they did not want him executed.
But Davis on Saturday denied Anderson's request for clemency.
Anderson was moved at 6 p.m. to a "death
watch" cell, just a few feet from the death chamber where he had
his last meal. The inmate asked for two grilled cheese
sandwiches, a pint of plain cottage cheese, and a mix of hominy
and corn, topped off by a piece of peach pie, a pint of
chocolate chip ice cream, and radishes. The condemned man did
not ask for a spiritual adviser to be with him during his final
hours, San Quentin Prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon said.
After his death, his attorneys released part
of one of his poems, titled "Unchained Visions, #9:" If no other
misses you, I will: I will sense the emptiness where once you
breathed.
Stephen Wayne Anderson, 48, was the 10th
person to die in the San Quentin death chamber since executions
resumed in 1992. The others: -- April 21, 1992: Robert Alton
Harris, 39. -- Aug. 24, 1993: David Edwin Mason, 36. -- Feb. 23,
1996: William George Bonin, 49. -- May 3, 1996: Keith Daniel
Williams, 48. -- July 14, 1998: Thomas Martin Thompson, 43. --
Feb. 9, 1999: Jaturun "Jay" Siripongs, 43. -- May 4, 1999:
Manuel Babbitt, 50. -- March 15, 2000: Darrell "Young Elk" Rich,
45. -- March 27, 2001: Robert Lee Massie, 59.
Anderson, Stephen Wayne
CDC# C33900
Sex: M
Alias:
None
Race:
White
Date Received:
07/30/1981
DOB:
07/08/1953
Education:
Unknown
Location:
San Quentin State Prison
Married:
No
Sentence:
County of Trial:
San Bernardino
Sentence Date:
07/24/1981
County of Residence:
Unknown
County of Offense:
San Bernardino
Offense Date:
NA
Court Action:
Affirmed
Court Date:
12/27/1990
Case #:
SCR36938
Victims:
Elizabeth Lyman (female)
Co-Defendant:
None.
Summary:
Stephen Wayne
Anderson was convicted of one count of first-degree murder with
special circumstances and one count of residential burglary in the
May 26, 1980 murder of Elizabeth Lyman. A San Bernardino County jury
sentenced Anderson to death on July 24, 1981.
Elizabeth Lyman
was an 81-year-old retired piano teacher, and lived by herself in
Bloomington, San Bernardino County. About an hour after midnight on
Monday, May 26, 1980, Anderson, a 26-year-old escapee from Utah
State Prison, broke into her home, and cut her telephone line with a
knife, believing no one was at home. He was startled when she woke
up in her bed. He shot her in the face from a distance of between
eight and 20 inches with his .45 caliber handgun as she lay in her
bed. Anderson then covered her body with a blanket, recovered the
expelled casing from the hollow point bullet that killed her, and
ransacked her house for money. He found less than $100.
Anderson next sat
down in Mrs. Lyman’s kitchen to eat a dinner of noodles and eggs.
His meal was interrupted, however, by sheriff’s deputies called to
the scene by a suspicious neighbor who had been awakened by barking
dogs and had seen Anderson in Mrs. Lyman’s house through a window.
The deputies arrested Anderson at 3:47 a.m., and took him to the San
Bernardino Sheriff’s Substation in Fontana.
Anderson was an
escapee from Utah State Prison at the time of Mrs. Lyman’s death. He
escaped on Nov. 24, 1979, and had been incarcerated for one count of
aggravated burglary in 1971 and three counts of aggravated burglary
in 1973. While incarcerated at Utah State Prison, Anderson murdered
an inmate, assaulted another inmate, and assaulted a correctional
officer. Anderson also admitted to six other contract killings in
Las Vegas, Nevada that happened prior to the crime for which he
received a death sentence.
While incarcerated
in the California Department of Corrections, Anderson received CDC
115s (Rule Violation Report). He assaulted another inmate in 1987,
used force and violence in 1985, and used force and violence while
fighting in 1984.
Execution:
At 12:18 a.m.,
January 29, 2002, the execution by lethal injection of Stephen Wayne
Anderson began in San Quentin State Prison's execution chamber. He
was pronounced dead at 12:30 a.m.
Condemned inmate
Stephen Wayne Anderson has selected the following for his last meal:
Two (2) grilled cheese sandwiches (American cheese), one (1) pint of
cottage cheese (plain, no fruit), Hominy/corn mixture (regular
hominy, regular corn), one (1) piece of peach pie, one (1) pint of
chocolate chip ice cream, and radishes.
It should be noted
that inmate Anderson did not request any special food items for his
scheduled visits, January 24-28, 2002.
When asked by the
Warden if he had any last words, Mr. Anderson was very adamant that
he did not.
