Albert Greenwood Brown’s Execution Delayed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued the stay for Albert Greenwood Brown this afternoon and delayed the first California execution in five years.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an order Monday delaying the execution of a convicted rapist and murderer by one day, postponing what would be the first death sentence carried out in California in nearly five years.

Schwarzenegger cited procedural reasons for the temporary reprieve, saying that an appeals court decision allowing the execution to be carried out would not take effect until Thursday, a day after the execution was previously scheduled.

The reprieve ends at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.

The execution has now been scheduled for 9 PM Thursday night.

The governor allowed the stay so that Brown could exhaust his final appeals which would not be decided until Thursday.

Brown’s attorneys have filed simulataneous appeals to the federal courts and state courts, seeking to block his execution on the grounds that the state improperly adopted its new lethal injection procedures. They allege that execution under the new regulations would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The 45-hour reprieve pushes the execution to within hours of the expiration date on the state’s supply of sodium thiopental, one of the drugs used in the lethal injection process.

The attorney general’s office said Monday that it would recommend not scheduling any more executions after Sept. 30 until the state could secure a fresh supply of the drug, an anesthetic that renders the condemned inmate unconscious before lethal drugs are injected.

The delay was imposed by Schwarzenegger just hours after Marin County Superior Court Judge Verna Adams refused to block Brown’s execution after he argued in a lawsuit that California’s new death penalty regulations were improperly adopted.

“Mr. Brown cannot prove that he will suffer pain if he is executed under the current regulations,” Adams said.

A federal judge ruled similarly on Friday after Brown contended California’s lethal injection process put him at risk of suffering cruel and unusual punishment.

I mean he has had ONLY, what, almost thirty years!

Again, I would not hold my breath for this or any California execution soon.

What a travesty of justice.