"Calif regulators OK new lethal injection methods," is the AP report from Monday afternoon, via the San Francisco Chronicle.
Regulators have approved revised lethal injection procedures ordered by a federal judge, who halted capital punishment in the state until prison officials improved the execution process.
The new regulations were almost immediately challenged by a lawsuit that could delay executions even longer. The last California execution occurred in 2006.
The new regulations were approved by the Office of Administrative Law on Friday and included detailed instructions on how prison officials should administer the lethal three-drug cocktail to condemned inmates.
Carol Williams reports, "State's new execution plan is challenged in court," in the Tuesday edition of the Los Angeles Times.
A death row inmate convicted of the 1985 torture and murder of a pizza deliveryman in Glendale asked a court Monday to strike down the state's newly revised execution procedures as illegal and likely to inflict excruciating pain if used on any of California's 700-plus condemned prisoners.
The lawsuit filed by Mitchell Sims, 50, alleges that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation rushed through revisions of the lethal injection procedures and deliberately sought to shut the public out of the process.
And:
Corrections officials have spent the last two years tinkering with the procedures to incorporate small changes suggested in some of the more than 20,000 public comments.
"Execution protocols challenged," is the title of the San Bernardino Sun report written by Neil Nisperos.
Assemblyman Curt Hagman says a bill he introduced earlier this year could have prevented a legal challenge this week to new execution procedures.The California Office of Administrative Law on Friday approved new lethal injection protocols ordered by a federal judge. According to a Department of Corrections report on the new procedures, the revisions to California's lethal injection protocol will result in the "dignified end of life" for condemned inmates.
On Monday, attorneys for death row inmate Mitchell Sims, who was convicted of killing a pizza deliveryman in 1985 in Glendale, filed a lawsuit claiming the revised procedures are unlawful and painful.
Hagman's legislation would have allowed the director of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to make all decisions related to the administration of the death penalty such as procedures, staffing and layout of the execution chamber.
And:
Stephanie Faucher, associate director of the anti-death penalty group Death Penalty Focus, based in San Francisco, said her group doesn't expect executions to be scheduled for quite some time.
"The death penalty is extremely costly and doesn't serve the needs of taxpayers or victim's families because the process is so dysfunctional," Faucher said. "The death penalty is not compatible with timely executions. ... The alternative would be life without parole, which is a much less expensive and severe punishment."
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in 2006 had halted capital punishment until prison officials improved the execution process. Fogel said the method violated a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The Stockton Record coverage is, "Revised lethal injection OK'd, challenged," by Scott Smith.
State prison officials won approval of their newly revised lethal injection procedure only to draw a new lawsuit Monday, clouding chances of California's quickly resuming executions.
Attorneys for condemned Stocktonian Michael Angelo Morales, 50, brought capital punishment in California to a halt in 2006 and forced the state to put its revised lethal injection protocol up for public hearing, which it did.
That cleared Friday with an OK from the state's Office of Administrative Law, a state body that painstakingly reviews rules proposed by state agencies such as the prison system. The clearance appeared to move California one step closer to resuming executions.
And:
"We think the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation didn't comply with a lot of rules in the process resulting in the regulations," San Francisco attorney Sara Eisenberg said. "Our aim is to make sure the CDCR follow the rules."
Among arguments, the suit claims the state never wanted public input into the execution procedure and didn't rethink its use of a three-drug protocol, which the suit argues isn't viable.
A spokeswoman for the office of California Attorney General Jerry Brown declined to comment on the lawsuit or say what impact it may have on resuming executions in California.
"New challenge filed against state’s lethal injection process," by Layla Bohm is from the Lodi News-Sentinel.
A state agency signed off on a new lethal injection protocol Friday afternoon, meaning it will become law in 30 days — and by Monday morning it was the subject of a lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of a death row inmate whose appeals have been exhausted, claims the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation failed to follow state laws regarding new regulations. All executions have been on hold since February 2006, when a judge halted the lethal injection of Michael Morales, who raped and murdered Tokay High School student Terri Lynn Winchell.
Corrections officials have since rewritten the lethal injection procedure, including three rounds of public comment.
Claiming that “the CDCR has unlawfully thwarted public participation in the rulemaking process,” attorneys asked a judge to invalidate the new protocol. The 42-page lawsuit was filed in Marin County, where death row inmates are housed in San Quentin State Prison.
The suit was filed by San Francisco-based law firm Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, which is not involved in the Morales case.
Earlier coverage from California begins with this post.
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