"Rushed to Death," is the title of an editorial in today's San Francisco Chronicle.
California has been trying, in vain, to carry out its first execution in nearly five years. Its efforts to execute death row inmate Albert Greenwood Brown Jr., who was convicted in a 1980 rape and murder, have been stymied by the courts, and the facts of the situation sound like a grim farce.
And:
This plan didn't go over well with the federal courts, which didn't feel that they'd had enough time to review the state's new lethal injection procedures - or the state courts, which didn't feel that the state was following proper protocol. So now the whole thing's off, until at least next year.
This absurd episode merely points out the difficulties - and the expense - of capital punishment. As such delays and denials persist, we hope Californians will begin to reconsider the great cost and highly questionable value of state-sanctioned killing.
"Calif. back to square one in restarting executions," is the AP report by Paul Elias, via the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
The courts took much of the blame for the state's failure this week to execute a notorious rapist and killer.
In the end, though, the prison department's expiring supply of a drug used during lethal injections also helped derail the fast-track attempt to take the life of Albert Greenwood Brown.
Now, the attorney general's office is back to square one in its dogged five-year legal battle to resume executions, as prison officials try to restock the drug and U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel reconsiders whether the state's revamped lethal injection procedures amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
"He will decide the constitutionality of California's execution protocols," Fordham University law school professor Deborah Denno said. "All this rush wasn't really allowing him to do so."
Daniel Wood posts, "Why California OK'd, then delayed first execution in years," at the Christian Science Monitor.
California’s on-again, off-again execution of a convicted murderer spotlights several issues in America’s capital punishment system, say national observers. The death penalty is currently legal in 35 states.
Changing public attitudes over the death penalty and states' economic concerns are joined now by scarce availability of the drugs used for lethal injections as reasons for calling off scheduled executions. Several studies showing faulty crime lab procedures and racial or economic bias in court sentencing add to the calls for a halt to capital punishment, experts say.
The execution of Albert Brown, convicted in 1982 of rape and murder, was scheduled for Thursday at 9 p.m. but was canceled after state and federal courts attempts to put him to death before the prison’s supply of lethal chemicals expired at midnight. The execution would have been California’s first since 1996, when a federal judge imposed a moratorium on them, holding that the state’s lax framework for lethal injections was creating an unacceptable risk of botched executions.
And:
"At one end of the spectrum is that we are finding more and more reasons why we don’t always get the conviction right, and at the other end states are really not equipped to pay for it, creating real tension on the system,” says Cassy Stubbs, a senior staff attorney for the Capital Punishment Project.
"The main question is whether we should be executing people at all, especially if there is any ambiguity as to whether they are guilty of the crime, ” says Dr. Allison Cotton, an associate professor of criminology at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. “Ambiguity should automatically result in a life sentence,” she says.
Cotton says the validity of the capital punishment system is suspect. She points out that over 200 people have been wrongfully convicted and had their convictions overturned with DNA evidence in recent years. "If the system that sentences people to death is faulty at all, the death penalty should be abolished because we can’t take it back once a person has been executed.”
The Riverside Press-Enterprise reports, "Sister: Family upset over delay in Brown execution," written by Richard De Atley.
The sister of Susan Jordan, the 15-year-old Riverside girl who was kidnapped, raped and strangled 30 years ago by Albert Greenwood Brown Jr., said court action that ended with Brown's execution date being vacated this week has caused "profound and unfathomable" distress to the family.
"The appeals process in California has proven to be nothing more than a never-ending war of attrition against justice and the rights of victims and their families," Karen Jordan Brown said in an e-mailed statement sent Thursday.
In a separate phone interview, she said that watching the legal fight for the past few days "has been really stressful. We are just moving on with our lives today as we have been for the last 28 years."
Karen Jordan Brown, who was 9 when her sister died, has said she plans to attend the execution with her brother James Jordan, who was 7 at the time of Susan's Oct. 28, 1980, slaying.
James Clark posts, "California's $4 Million Rollercoaster Ride," at California Progress Report.
The courts have finally put a stop to the rollercoaster, telling the Attorney General quite clearly that we need to take the time to answer these questions before we rush to take a man’s life. The expiration date on the bottle should have nothing to do with it.
This fiasco has shown just how broken California’s death penalty has become. The people of California will be better off when we replace the death penalty with life without parole, requiring people in prison to work and provide restitution to victims’ families.
At Huffington Post, journalist Robert Weller writes, "Condemned Man's Last Request: Don't Screw It Up."
Earlier coverage of California attempted execution begins with this post.
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