The new execution chamber was on display for journalists, yesterday. Meanwhile, action resumed in a federal district court as Judge Jeremy Fogel revisits California lethal injection procedures. There is a great deal of front-page California coverage this morning.
Paul Elias writes the AP report, "Brown wants executions to resume in California," via Google News.
Whether California's first execution in more than four years will occur next week remained an open question Tuesday, as a judge grappled with a demand from the state attorney general's office to resume lethal injections.
A hearing was held on the issue after a Riverside County judge last month set an execution date of Sept. 29 for Albert Greenwood Brown, who was convicted of abducting, raping and killing a 15-year-old girl on her way home from school in 1980.
The action surprised many because a federal judge halted executions in 2006 and ordered prison officials to overhaul lethal injection procedures. The state adopted new regulations on Aug. 29 but had not sought the judge's permission to restart executions.
On Tuesday, California deputy attorney general Michael Quinn told U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel the new regulations authorize the state to execute Brown next week.
Brown's attorney John Grele countered that the judge needed to review the new regulations and the state's contention it had improved its lethal injection procedure before executions can commence.
Fogel, who imposed the temporary moratorium in 2006, said he was concerned that he was left with so little time to decide such an important issue.
"There is no way any court can conduct an orderly review of constitutional claims in eight days," he said.
Nonetheless, the judge said he would rule by Friday.
From San Quentin, AP writer Terry Collins posts, "Official: San Quentin death chamber ready for use." It's via the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
Officials say a death chamber at San Quentin State Prison is ready for a scheduled execution next week—if a federal judge lifts his moratorium on lethal injections.
The media got a rare glimpse of the $835,000 facility on the same day lawyers for Attorney General Jerry Brown urged U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel to allow the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown.
The death row inmate is scheduled to die Sept. 29 for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Riverside County girl abducted on her way home from school in 1980.
"We are fully prepared to carry out an execution," prison spokesman Lt. Sam Robinson said as he led members of the media on a tour of the lethal injection facility completed in 2008—two years after Fogel halted executions in California and ordered prison officials to improve procedures for administering lethal injections.
Located near death row, the white, cinder block, 11-room death chamber has a main viewing room where nearly 30 officials and media can witness an execution through a glass window.
The sterile-looking facility also has separate eyewitness rooms for the families of victims and inmates.
The Los Angeles Times carries, "Clock is ticking on first execution at San Quentin's revamped death chamber," by Carol Williams.
Pistachio vinyl covers the gurney in the state's new lethal injection chamber, the only splash of color in a sterile white room where corrections officials intend to put to death rapist-murderer Albert Greenwood Brown next week.
An Elgin clock, the only other furnishing, ticks above the death bed, tracking the time to the first execution to be carried out in California in nearly five years — unless a judge moves to stop it.
The hexagonal room surrounded by viewing compartments and a holding cell where Brown is expected to spend his last six hours were built to comply with a federal court order that state officials correct deficiencies in the execution regimen. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel halted the February 2006 execution of murderer Michael Morales after hearing testimony about inadequate anesthesia and cramped conditions in the former gas chamber.
Fogel's order set in motion a legal duel between those who want capital punishment practiced in a state where two out of three citizens support the ultimate penalty and those who oppose executions on moral, religious and economic grounds and have used the hiatus to challenge its validity in state and federal court.
And:
At 200 square feet, the lethal injection chamber built with inmate labor and $853,000 in taxpayer money is more than four times the size of the old metal-walled gas chamber used for two executions by lethal gas and 11 by lethal injection since capital punishment was restored in 1977.
Vials of the three drugs used to execute the condemned are stored in a caged and locked refrigerator in the death chamber's adjacent Infusion Control Room. Sodium thiopental would be pumped through first, to anesthetize the inmate, then pancurium bromide to paralyze him and, finally, potassium chloride to stop his heart. Two grommeted holes in the wall on either side of the gurney would be threaded with tubes to carry the lethal infusions from the masked execution team in the control room to the veins of the inmate. The inmate would be restrained by five black straps across the body and cuffs to steady his arms and ankles. Four tan wall phones with red warning lights stand ready to receive calls from the governor, the warden, the state attorney general and the U.S. Supreme Court, should a last-minute clemency be granted.
Fogel has yet to inspect the new death chamber or review the revised execution procedures drafted by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over the last three years and approved by a state agency in July. But department spokeswoman Terry Thornton pointed out Tuesday that the Morales case wasn't a class action on behalf of all death row inmates and posed no barrier to Brown's scheduled death by lethal injection.
"California previews new death chamber at San Quentin," by Sam Stanton and Denny Walsh appears in today's Sacramento Bee.
They may be getting a little ahead of themselves, but California prison officials preparing to execute an inmate next week for the first time in nearly five years opened their new lethal injection chamber for inspection by the media Tuesday.
Convicted Riverside County killer Albert Greenwood Brown is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday in the new facility, an $853,000 compound inside San Quentin State Prison that was built with prison labor in a project that began in 2007.
"San Quentin gives glimpse of new injection space," by Kevin Fagan is in the San Francisco Chronicle,
Unlike the 1937-vintage gas chamber that was tucked behind an ominous-looking iron door, from the outside the squarish new injection center looks as benign as a storage warehouse. It has no outside-looking windows, is painted beige, and is tucked beneath a fortresslike wall, 100 yards to the south of the gas chamber.
Inside the 23-by-10-foot, rectangular chamber where the prisoner will be injected with deadly chemicals, there is room for dozens of people - unlike the 7 1/2-foot-wide gas chamber where six guards had to squeeze by one another, with difficulty. The injection gurney - a converted, lime-green dentist chair onto which the prisoner is strapped down, flat on his back - sits in the middle with plenty of maneuvering room on three sides.
It's the same gurney that has been used in 11 lethal injections since 1996, when the method replaced gas executions in California.
Squeezed together
In the much smaller, octagonal gas chamber, the six execution team members who had to strap the prisoner down and insert intravenous lines into his veins could barely move around one another. There's no chance of that happening in the new execution room, even with new procedures calling for a minimum of 20 execution team members inside and out of the death chamber.
The old gas chamber also had just five small windows separated by thick steel girders. Witnesses were gathered, all together, in a circle around the chamber. In the hazy light and with support pillars in the witness area blocking views, it was difficult to see more than a snippet of what was happening to the condemned man.
The San Francisco Sentinel has a gallery of photographs at, "California Unveils New Lethal Injection Chamber."
Howard Mintz writes, "Fight to resume California executions intensifies," for the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
With California prosecutors pushing full speed ahead to resume executions after a hiatus of more than four years, a federal judge in San Jose on Tuesday suggested he may not have the power to block the state's effort to put a condemned Riverside County killer to death next week, despite an unresolved legal challenge to the state's lethal injection procedures.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel indicated during an hourlong hearing that he will rule by Friday on a request to block the planned Sept. 29 execution of Albert Brown, on death row since 1982 for the murder of a 15-year-old girl.
Fogel in 2006 declared a de facto moratorium on executions in California while he considered a lawsuit by death row inmate Michael Morales that maintains that the state's lethal injection method is unconstitutional. But a complex blend of events in recent weeks has put Brown in line to be the first San Quentin inmate executed in nearly five years.
Attorney General Jerry Brown, in the midst of a heated gubernatorial campaign, has intensified the effort to get executions back on track, arguing in various courts that newly revised lethal injection procedures that went into effect in August should permit the state to resume executions. The question now is whether the state can execute Albert Brown and other death row inmates before Fogel and other courts have a chance to fully review those revised procedures, as well as the adequacy of a newly constructed death chamber at San Quentin.
And:
Among other things, Fogel suggested there may not be legal justification for Brown's execution to be blocked, but that he may also have the right to impose conditions on the state, as he did just before he gave Morales a reprieve in February 2006. The judge indicated that one possibility is using just one drug in the execution procedure, sodium thiopental, instead of three; lawyers for death row inmates argue that the other two drugs mask that the inmate may be experiencing excruciating pain during an execution.
Fogel did tell lawyers on both sides that there is fresh urgency to resolving the broader Morales challenge to lethal injection and put the case back on a fast track to be argued by the end of the year. Fogel in 2006 found that the state's previous lethal injection procedures posed a threat of causing a cruel and inhumane execution due to poor training of execution team members and an antiquated death chamber.
The judge gave state officials the opportunity to revise the execution method, and prison officials this summer came up with new procedures they believe remedy any legal issues.
The Stockton Record has two articles by Scott Smith. First, "San Quentin execution could come next week."
About the only thing that remains the same is the worn, mint-green gurney, a sort of modified dentist's chair, draped with thick nylon straps and metal clasps.
Stepping inside California's sparkling new lethal-injection facility, it's the first thing to draw a visitor's eye. It stands like a macabre museum relic, displayed under lights behind glass panes in a spacious, sterile room.
It's hardly worth admiration, having served as the vehicle for at least 13 state executions. A plastic cover at the gurney's foot shows small cracks from use.
And, the second article, "Federal judge's plan could pave way for Morales' death."
A federal judge overseeing Michael Angelo Morales' objections to lethal injection outlined an aggressive plan for resolving the Stockton man's case by year's end, which would clear the way for his execution.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel also said that by Friday he will decide if there's any reason to stay next Wednesday's planned execution of Albert Greenwood Brown Jr., convicted in Riverside County in 1982 of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl.
Brown, 56, could be the first California man executed in nearly five years.
Attorneys for Morales, 50, blocked the state from executing Morales - or any other inmates - in 2006, arguing that its method of lethal injection risks unconstitutional levels of pain. Morales raped and murdered 17-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell, also of Stockton, in 1981.
Five years after taking on Morales' case, Fogel, of San Jose, is now handling an expanding set of complications surrounding capital punishment in California.
First addressing Morales' case on Tuesday, Fogel asked attorneys for Morales and Attorney General Jerry Brown, who is pushing to resume executions, to address the state's revised execution regulations.
"What's right with them, what's wrong with them?" asked Fogel, who also said he intends to tour San Quentin State Prison's new lethal-injection chamber.
Earlier coverage of the lethal injection dispute in California begins with this post.
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
Related posts are in the lethal injection index.
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