Illustration by David Plunkert

Christy Ann Fornoff’s killer still awaits execution 25 years after his conviction. It’s time that he and all the other Death Row inmates meet their demise.

The murdered girl died in minutes, the air choked from her lungs. Ever since, the dead girl’s parents have been dying in increments, one calendar page at a time. The girl’s killer? He lives on Death Row, where his last days seem to be taking eternity. So goes the case of Donald Beaty. It is a joke slowly told, a jest with neither end nor punchline, a parody of justice that draws nary a laugh. In December, the state Attorney General’s Office petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to set a date for Beaty’s execution.

Depending on the whim of the wise folks in robes, Beaty could be put to death this month. Or this year. Or this decade.

“What’s the hurry?” the legal system seems to ask. After all, it’s only been 25 years since Christy Ann Fornoff’s killer was found guilty.

To answer that question, I submit a single scene, a few minutes inside a Mesa mobile home. Four generations of family photos crowd the walls. A tapestry in the kitchen reads, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature.” Below that message, the dead girl’s father stares at his wife, as he has every morning for so long. Roger and Carol Fornoff were married 50 years ago and complete each other’s sentences today.

“You don’t know what the word ‘closure’ is, and we don’t either, even though this happened to us and we’re going through it,” Roger says. Next comes Carol’s turn: “You don’t realize how many times there’s going to be an appeal, or how many times a reporter is going to call us and we didn’t even know an appeal has just happened. It’s endless.”

Endless. The word perfectly describes the case of Arizona v. Donald Beaty, as it does so many capital cases in this state. Currently we have 129 inmates on Death Row, 21 of whom have been awaiting their ultimate punishment for more than 20 years. The number of executions Arizona has performed in all that time? Just 23.

Yes, I know due process takes a good long time. Yes, I’ve read about Death Row inmates exonerated, about claims of innocent men executed. And yes, I still believe allowing Donald Beaty to draw one more breath is absurd. Put simply, if we are to have a death penalty in this state – and I believe justice demands that we do – then Beaty is execution’s poster child.

Twice in past dozen years, I’ve driven to Florence to witness killers put to death. Both times, I walked away thinking the murderer got better than he gave, that this antiseptic, clinical end to a life was justice, but only barely. To me, a barbarous act like Donald Beaty’s calls for society to be restored to balance; he forfeited his life the moment he snatched the life of a teenage girl. To me, Beaty should be strapped to that gurney, and right damn now.

Here are the facts of his case, as adjudicated across 25 years: Beaty was a maintenance man at the Rock Point Apartments in Tempe. On May 9, 1984, he lured Christy Ann Fornoff, a 13-year-old newspaper delivery girl, up to his place. There, Beaty raped Christy Ann and smothered her to death. Her body was found two days later, wrapped in a sheet beside the apartment complex’s Dumpster.

Beaty was convicted in June 1985, on the strength of overwhelming evidence: Hairs and fibers taken from the sheet cloaking the victim’s body matched evidence taken from his blanket, carpet and couch. Christy Ann’s vomit was found in Beaty’s closet, where he stuffed the girl. Witnesses put him at the Dumpster just before the body was found. And a jailhouse psychiatrist testified that Beaty told him, “I didn’t mean to kill her.”

Do Carol and Roger Fornoff have any doubt that he’s the murderer?  “No,” they say almost in perfect unison. “None at all.”

Even Beaty’s lawyers from the Federal Public Defender’s Office no longer argue too strenuously for his innocence. These days, the push to keep Beaty alive rests on the fact that he’s one of six plaintiffs in a lawsuit protesting Arizona’s lethal injection protocol.

The case, filed in 2007, doesn’t argue that lethal injection is “cruel and unusual punishment,” since the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled it constitutional. Instead, the lawsuit argues that the way the state Department of Corrections gives the injection is wrong. According to their latest brief, filed in mid-December, the plaintiffs don’t like the three-drug IV system used to execute inmates in Arizona. Nor do they approve of the qualifications of the state’s execution team, a group they believe hasn’t been sufficiently trained in preparing syringes and monitoring the killer’s medical condition.

The bottom line, in the eyes of federal public defender Dale Baich, is that Beaty deserves his days in court. And perhaps he even deserves a shot at escaping death.

“I realize that this has been painful for [the Fornoff family]. But this is a process that is necessary in a free society and one that ultimately protects all of us,” Baich explains. “You know, a life sentence, life without parole, would achieve the same result. Mr. Beaty would be removed from society.”

Life versus death for Beaty is a choice the Fornoffs have debated for years. They’re parents of seven, grandparents of 25, Christians who believe in the “Our Father” prayer, in forgiving those who trespass against us. They have turned their daughter’s murder into their mission, plowing their savings into a cabin in Pine, an eight-bedroom homage to salvation. In the past 15 years, more than 2,200 relatives of dead children have slept in the “Christy House in the Pines,” praying there during retreats hosted by the Fornoffs.

Christy Ann’s parents have learned forgiveness the hardest way imaginable. But let’s not mistake a soft heart for a confused one.

“There’s church laws and the Bible,” says Roger, 75. He explains that at the time of Beaty’s sentencing, a life sentence meant the possibility of parole in 25 years. Thus, the family chose execution. “He screwed up as far as I’m concerned on civil law. That’s it.”

 While Carol refuses to attend Beaty’s execution, Roger will go. He’s never believed in closure, he says, but if there’s any chance such solace exists, maybe it’s in a world where Donald Beaty no longer draws breath.

Out of habit, husband and wife sit hand in hand beneath the photograph of a smiling blond teenager, a curly-haired girl absent for 25 years now. “Your heart is always broken for that child,” Carol says. “You don’t ever get over the death of your loved one. There’s always a piece of you missing. You still hold them up in your heart and you always will.”

“You get through it, “ Roger adds. “But you never get over it.”