"State officials seek to resume executions in Calif.," is the title of Paul Elias' AP report, via Google News.
Death row inmate Albert Greenwood Brown on Tuesday morning was handed a "death warrant" — the first such document delivered in more than five years — informing him his execution has been scheduled for Sept. 29.
Around the same time, Marin County Superior Court Judge Verna Adams was indefinitely extending the ban on executions in the state, saying "unless and until" she says otherwise, the prohibition remains in effect.
Prison officials said they will respect the judge's order if it is still in effect Sept. 29, but said they are forging ahead "operationally" as if the execution will occur as schedule.
New lethal injection procedures prison officials said went into effect Sunday are at the center of a long-simmering debate that came to a head Tuesday over whether to resume executions in California, which have been on hold since early 2006.
Carol Williams writes, "Executions are barred despite setting of date for inmate's lethal injection, judge rules," in today's Los Angeles Times.
Executions in California cannot resume "unless and until" the court that issued a permanent injunction on lethal injections in 2007 lifts it, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Marin County Superior Court Judge Verna Adams issued the reminder that the court order remains in force a day after a Riverside County judge set an execution date of Sept. 29 for death row inmate Albert Greenwood Brown, who raped and murdered a 15-year-old girl in 1980.
Adams' ruling was made at a hearing in the cases of two other death row prisoners, Michael Morales of Stockton and Mitchell Sims of Los Angeles. Morales, Sims and Brown are among the few death row prisoners who have exhausted all appeals and are eligible for execution once the practice resumes. There are 706 condemned inmates in California, where the average time from sentencing to execution now runs at least 25 years.
Executions have been on hold in the state for nearly five years, since Morales' defense lawyers challenged the lethal injection procedures in federal court, alleging that they violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel halted Morales' scheduled February 2006 execution after the prisoner's lawyers argued that the three-drug method was flawed and had possibly exposed some of the 13 men executed in California since 1977 to extreme pain.
In hearings Fogel held later that year, witnesses testified that the first injection, a powerful barbiturate, may not have fully anesthetized the prisoner before the second drug induced paralysis and the painful last dose stopped the heart.
The Silicon Valley Mercury News has, "Judge again puts state efforts to resume executions on hold," by Howard Mintz.
The new legal developments signal that the state is trying to kick-start the death penalty in California, despite repeated setbacks in the state and federal courts that have effectively shuttered San Quentin's death chamber since the January 2006 execution of Clarence Ray Allen.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation adopted new lethal injection procedures this summer, hoping to resolve state court orders that found the previous rules had been put in place in violation of state regulations, as well as a San Jose federal judge's concerns that the prior lethal injection method risked cruel and unusual executions.
But the new regulations now face new legal challenges.
Lawyers for death row inmates filed a lawsuit in Marin County Superior Court, saying they still don't comply with California rules for enacting new regulations. And U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel is now evaluating whether he is free to consider if the new lethal injection procedures, and San Quentin's new death chamber, address concerns that inmates may suffer inhumane deaths from the state's three-drug cocktail of lethal drugs.
Fogel first put California executions on hold in February 2006, when he delayed the execution of condemned Central Valley murderer Michael Morales to consider a challenge to lethal injection. Fogel has been unable to fully resolve the case while the state crafted new lethal injection procedures, and the U.S. Supreme Court considered the issue in a case out of Kentucky. But he recently issued an order asking whether he can get the Morales case moving again.
In court papers filed Tuesday, Attorney General Jerry Brown's lawyers argued that the state "now has presumptively valid regulations for carrying out lethal injections," and is prepared to defend them if they are challenged in the case being heard by Fogel.'
Earlier coverage of the issue from California begins with this post; related posts are in the lethal
injection index. More on Judge Fogel's 2006 ruling is here. Other posts examining Judge Fogel's federal court hearing on California lethal injection practices include:
- Deborah Denno on Judge Fogel's Decision
- The California LI Hearing
- California LI Hearing - Day 4
- California LI Hearing - Day 3
- California LI Hearing - Day 2
- California Hearing
- The Execution of Stanley Williams
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