Today's California Roundup

"LA judge refuses to order one-drug executions," is the AP filing by Linda Deutsch.  It's via the Silicon Valley Mercury News.

A judge turned down a bid Monday by the Los Angeles County district attorney to order the immediate execution of two death row prisoners by a new single-drug injection method.

Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler said he did not have jurisdiction to order the procedure that has never been used in California.

Executions in the state have been on hold for years while appellate courts consider the legality of the three-drug protocol now in place.

There are currently 725 prisoners on death rows in California, where voters will consider a ballot initiative in November that would replace the death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole.

At Monday's hearing, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley suggested a virtual end-run around the current logjam in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over the way executions are done.

Deputy District Attorney Michelle Hanisee said the three drugs used previously are no longer available, and a pharmaceutical company plans to stop making one of them.

The decision by Judge Fidler came as San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe asked a judge to set an execution date for Robert Fairbank, who was sent to death row for the murder of a San Francisco woman in 1985. A judge is expected to consider Wagstaffe's request in October.

And:

Proposition 34, the upcoming ballot initiative, argues that California has spent $4 billion on a dysfunctional capital punishment system that has resulted in just 13 executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. For a brief period beginning in 1972, the death penalty was held as unconstitutional in the state and death sentences were commuted to life.

In his remarks in court, Fidler referred to the upcoming ballot measure and said the people of California will have the opportunity to decide the future of capital punishment.

"If they set aside the death penalty, that's it," he said. "Then they're expressing what their will is at this time in society, and that they don't want it to take place."

If they reject the ballot proposition, the death penalty for those who have exhausted their legal remedies "will have to be done in an efficient manner," Fidler said.

KPCC-FM, Southern California Public Radio, posts, "Court won't force California to resume executions," by Rina Palta.

On Monday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler denied L.A. County's request for the state to execute two longtime Death Row inmates who've exhausted all of their legal appeals.

For decades, Mitchell Sims and Tiequon Cox have sat on California's male Death Row at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County. That's why earlier this year, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office asked a judge to step in and order the state of California to set execution dates for the men. The state, argued Assistant District Attorney Michele Hanisee, has dragged its feet on its legal obligation to carry out the death penalty in California.

The state has been mired in litigation over its lethal injection process for years. On Monday, Hanisee argued that instead of resolving the lawsuits, the "state is going as slow as they can and calling it progress." 

Fidler agreed - but he said that as a criminal trial judge, he lacked the authority to override a civil court order in Marin County or the California State Legislature's direction that a long administrative process is necessary to vet any lethal injection method. 

Attorneys for the inmates argued that the process is lenghty and arduous because it needs to be.

"I see why the state wants to take its time," said Attorney John Grele. "Because they did it so abysmally wrong the first time."

What happens next, Fidler said, depends on the results of the November elections. Voters will decide then on a ballot initiative to end the death penalty in California.

And:

Earlier this year, Governor Jerry Brown instructed California's Department of Corrections and Rehabillitation to pursue a single-drug protocol. Lawyers for the state say it has complied. During previous hearings on this case, a consultant to the department testified that the state has written and tested at San Quentin a single-drug protocol. But Goldman did not know when CDCR would begin the official rule-writing process that would allow that protocol to become a law. He estimated that process could take about 10 months once it's started. 

In court Monday, Judge Fidler wondered aloud about why the state continues to appeal court rulings against a three-drug process it apparently couldn't carry out anyway, instead of fast-tracking a new, one-drug process. 

"Though they may be interesting," he said, "we're not going to drag out this litigation to discover some facts."

"L.A. Judge Says No to Executions; Study Shows Death Penalty Will Cost State Billions," is the KCET-TV report by Brian Frank.

Two major developments relating to Prop 34 on Monday. First, a judge in the Los Angeles Superior Court denied the county's request to move forward with the executions of two Death Row inmates. California is currently locked in litigation over its method of execution, a three-drug lethal injection process that a court has ruled constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Earlier this year the district attorney's office asked a judge to set an execution date for two inmates at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, anyway. But as KPCC reported, L.A. County Judge Larry Fidler said...

...that as a criminal trial judge, he lacked the authority to override a civil court order in Marin County or the California State Legislature's direction that a long administrative process is necessary to vet any lethal injection method.

At the same time, a new study released Monday concluded that under the state's current criminal justice system it would cost taxpayers between $5 billion and $7 billion more to execute a prisoner than it would to carry out a sentence of Life Without Parole.

Judge Arthur L. Alarcón and Paula M. Mitchell, the authors of the study, reported that by 2050...

"...roughly 740 more inmates will be added to death row, an additional fourteen executions will be carried out, and more than five hundred death-row inmates will die of old age or other causes before the state executes them."

Earlier coverage from California, including the Los Angeles District Attorneys effort to restart execution and Prop. 34 news, begins at the link.

More on Prop. 34 at SAFE Caliornia.

Last year, Judge Alarcon and Mitchell wrote, "Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature's Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle," also for the Loyola Los Angeles Law Review.  Coverage of the earlier Alarcon-Mitchell law review article is at the link.