More coverage of California LI Challenge

http://standdown.typepad.com/weblog/2006/11/more_coverage_o.html

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

More coverage of California LI Challenge

Yesterday, we linked you to San Jose Mercury News coverage (here.) Today, Henry Weinstein of the Los Angeles Times reports on the additional briefing filed with Judge Jeremy Fogel in the challenge to California's procedure. LINK

California's procedures for executing prisoners by lethal injection fall short of standards set by the veterinary profession for animal euthanasia and were formulated with less care than methods in China, the world leader in capital punishment, according to a brief filed Tuesday in San Jose federal court by attorneys for a death row inmate.

In addition, the brief asserts that the execution team at San Quentin State Prison is "unlicensed, untrained, unprofessional and incompetent" to carry out its duties.

The brief was lodged as U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel prepares to rule on perhaps the most fiercely fought of a number of legal challenges in several states to lethal injection, the dominant method of execution in the nation.

Fogel is expected to rule by the end of the year in the case of Michael Morales, who argues that California's injection methods create an unnecessary risk of excessive pain and as a consequence violate the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation "conducts its executions in an outdated, cramped gas chamber with an undersized and dark anteroom," from which prison staff are supposed to assure proper administration of a three-drug protocol, the brief says.

The brief also says the state uses chemicals "mixed by untrained and unsupervised prison staff, while ensuring that there is no meaningful oversight or review."

Judge Fogel is expected to issue his ruling soon.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 04:31 PM in Lethal Injection Permalink

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