Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a newspaper interview...

Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a newspaper interview in his native Austria that his refusal of clemency in the execution of Donald Beardslee, 61, carried out at midnight on January 18, had made it "the hardest day of his life."
"I did not have a choice since I represent as governor a population which is overwhelmingly for the death penalty," Schwarzenegger told the mass circulation Kronen Zeitung.
"Since he approved the death sentence, unease has replaced ovations," the Kurier newspaper said about Schwarzenegger, whose rise to the California governorship in 2003 had given Austrians an immense sense of accomplishment.
But now Kurt Flecker, a socialist politician from the Styria region where Schwarzenegger was born, was quoted in the press as saying: "I am ashamed that Schwarzenegger has a relationship with Styria." In February 2004, several leading Austrian politicians, including then foreign minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, said they were disappointed that Schwarzenegger, who had taken office in November 2003, had refused to pardon a man on death row, who was eventually not executed.