Archive for the “Death Penalty” Category
The old San Quentin Prison Gas Chamber
The Obama Administration’s Department of Justice under Attorney General is doing their best to foil death penalty verdicts.
President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war – this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws – on the dubious grounds that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs intended to kill convicted killers.
On March 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug given under the three-drug lethal injection protocol used in most of the country’s 34 death-penalty states. The DEA also asked Kentucky and Tennessee for their sodium thiopental to aid its investigation. Why? The DEA referred me to the Department of Justice, which sent an e-mail declining to comment. News reports indicate that the feds had concerns that the drugs were imported improperly.
In the meantime, defense attorneys for convicted killers have been happy to chat with the press about what they call the illegal purchase of the drug. They never give up. First international death penalty opponents blocked foreign manufacture of lethal injection drugs. Then they put so much pressure on the industry that U.S. manufacturer Hospira stopped making it. As the supply dried up, states scrambled to get remaining doses and turned to a British wholesaler. That created another opening.
A lawsuit filed in a District of Columbia federal court charges that Georgia, California and other states have received shipments of “foreign thiopental” that was “misbranded” – and worse, not FDA approved. Attorney Bradford Berenson, who worked in the George W. Bush Justice Department, told me he’s not morally opposed to the death penalty. The goal of the suit was to force the FDA “to follow the law” and not allow “the importation of unapproved foreign drugs.”
Berenson warned that if thiopental is not administered properly, the middle drug in the protocol could cause excruciating pain. “Where this is clearly headed,” he said, “is changing the lethal injection protocols to no longer rely on this drug” – but instead try another anesthetic, maybe pentobarbital or propofol.
Problem: In response to the thiopental squeeze, Texas switched to pentobarbital. So: The ACLU tried to block the switch by arguing, among other things, that the lethal dose would not be administered by a health care professional. The next hitch: Medical associations bar doctors from participating in executions.
The fact is switching to other drugs will only lead to a circular argument method of obstructing enforcement of the death penalty. Then, there will be the physicians who will need to administer the drugs and the ethics involved with that.
So, just go back to the old gas chamber like the one above, which does not require a physician to administer the drugs or you could hang the convicted criminals.
Those methods are good enough and much more humane than these felons deserve anyway.
How long do you think it would take California to change the law with Jerry Brown as Governor and Kamala Harris as California Attorney General?
Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, thinks one way to impede stall-inducing litigation would be to reinstitute the gas chamber, but use nontoxic gas to replace oxygen. “It gets rid of this whole notion of a quasi-medical procedure,” he explained, when execution is in reality “a punishment” for horrific crimes.
Of course, first Sacramento would have to pass a law. Then there’d be administrative law reviews. Add another decade.
Don’t look for any California executions anytime soon.
Tags: California, Death Penalty
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The newly renovated San Quentin Prison Death Chamber
AP Photo
Federal Judge Jeremy today convened a hearing today at San Quentin Prison to inspect the newly renovated lethal injection death chamber.
The federal judge weighing whether California can resume executing condemned prisoners toured San Quentin State Prison’s new lethal injection facility Tuesday in what he called a fact-finding mission to help determine whether the state’s revised procedures meet constitutional standards.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel halted the execution of murderer Michael A. Morales five years ago, citing concerns the execution team was poorly trained, the converted gas chamber too cramped and ill-lit and the state’s method of delivering the three-drug execution cocktail at risk of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment.
Whether his concerns have been alleviated by rewriting of the legal protocols guiding the execution process and the physical changes made to the prison venue where death sentences are carried out was not immediately apparent.
The judge asked corrections officials questions about lighting, drug handling, conditions for witnesses and for the inmate’s last hours but gave no indication whether the answers allayed his earlier concerns.
Fogel, leading an entourage of lawyers for the state, Morales and other prisoners facing execution if the practice resumes, went room to room in the clinic-like facility, inspecting the hand-lettered drug vials arrayed on two trays in the infusion room, where the execution drugs are to be mixed and delivered via intravenous tubes threaded through the wall of the adjacent death chamber.
Fogel said he hoped to have a decision about whether executions can proceed “as soon as possible” but set out a schedule for further hearings that will run at least through spring.
Certainly, Judge Fogel is in NO hurry to render a decision which can then be appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court. This case has dragged on for five years and nothing yet has been decided, except that California now has the largest Death Row population in the country.
This entire process and Judge Fogel’s conduct of the case is a MOCKERY of the laws of the State of California and the United States. Californians have voted for the restoration of the death penalty and California’s procedures are NO different than those used in other states (which, by the way, have passed Constitutional muster).
Fogel and anti-death penalty advocates are STALLING. Finish the case, Judge and render a decision so your decision can be overturned – and believe me, it will.
No justice yet for Terri Lynn Winchell.
Terri Lynn Winchell
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The Death Penalty Archive
Tags: Death_Penalty, Jeremy_Fogel, Michael_Morales, Terri_Lynn_Winchell
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The newly renovated San Quentin Prison Death Chamber
Guess the State of California will have to find a foreign supplier or go back to the Gas Chamber for executions.
An anesthetic used in lethal injections will no longer be made by its only U.S. manufacturer because the company does not want it to be used in executions, forcing states that allow the death penalty to look for other suppliers.
Hospira Inc said on Friday that sodium thiopental has been in short supply for about a year because of manufacturing problems.
The company was planning to shift production to its plant in Liscate, Italy, but the Italian parliament will only allow the drug to be made there if Hospira can guarantee that it will not be used in capital punishment.
Italy is a member of the European Union, which has banned the death penalty and criticized the United States for allowing it.
Sodium thiopental is the first of a sequence of three drugs administered in U.S. lethal injections that paralyze breathing and stop the heart. A sedative is legally required in all lethal injections of U.S. death row inmates
“This is not how the drug is intended to be used,” Tareta Adams, a spokeswoman for Hospira, said in a telephone interview. “We’ve decided we’re no longer going to work to bring the drug back.”
Adams said Hospira typically distributes the drug through wholesalers, making it difficult to guarantee that it will not end up in the hands of U.S. correctional authorities.
At least two U.S. states that execute inmates through lethal injection have already tried to import sodium thiopental from a British company, the name of which has not been disclosed. London-based human rights group, Reprieve, sued the British government in November to stop export of the drug.
Texas, one of the United States’ biggest users of the lethal drug combination, is looking for alternative drugs, according to Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Well, the states could always return to either the gas chamber, electric chair, firing squad or hanging – all of which are more painful than lethal injection. But, oh well.
I see a market for another company or a company offshore making the drug. Or, like Oklahoma they could use pentobarbital (Nembutal) which is used for executions in China, in animal euthanasia and physician assisted suicide.
Stay tuned…..
Tags: Death_Penalty, Sodium_Thiopental
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 Michael Angelo Morales
Well, there have been NO executions in California for five years. But, there are some criminals that are being sent to Death Row anyway.
California continued to buck a nationwide trend away from costly and litigious death sentences in 2010, adding 28 new prisoners to the country’s most populous death row, according to correction officials and a national database on capital punishment.
Los Angeles County alone condemned eight defendants to death this year, the same number as Texas, and Riverside County sent six men to await execution, officials said.
The state’s death chamber was idle for a fifth year, though, because of protracted legal challenges of lethal injection practices and a nationwide shortage of the key drug used in the three-injection procedure.
But, federal judge Jeremy Fogel is going to physically review California’s newly modified Death Chamber.
A federal judge who halted lethal injections in California over concerns that it was cruel and unusual punishment plans to tour the state’s new death chamber in February.
U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel on Wednesday told attorneys representing a death row inmate who filed a lawsuit and the state attorney general’s office that he wants to hold a hearing at San Quentin State Prison sometime in February. Fogel is determining whether the state’s new lethal injection procedure is constitutional.
Fogel halted executions in early 2006 and ordered prison officials to improve their lethal injection process. The judge was concerned that staff members were inadequately trained and the death chamber was too small and dark to properly carry out executions.
Fogel wants to view firsthand the improvements prison officials made to the death chamber since then. Fogel wants to hold the hearing and tour sometime between Feb. 2 and Feb. 9 and asked lawyers to propose a hearing date.
The attorney general’s office asked for Feb. 9 while attorneys for death row inmate Michael Morales, who filed the lawsuit that led to Fogel’s ruling, haven’t made any suggestions yet.
I don’t think Californians can look for justice and enforcement of the death penalty law anytime soon. For the past five years, Judge Fogel has used one legal excuse after another to stifle the law of California (even the U.S. Supreme Court weighed into the argument, allowing executions in other states via lethal injection).
Plus, both newly elected Governor Jerry Brown (who appointed anti-death penalty and later removed California Supreme Court Chief Justice, Rose Bird) and Attorney General Kamala Harris are personally opposed to the death penalty and despite what they say, will be in no hurry to execute Michael Angelo Morales or Albert Greenwood Brown. Look for more legal rangling after Judge Fogel visits the death chamber in February. And, then there is the Morales suit.
No justice yet for Terri Lynn Winchell.
Terri Lynn Winchell
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The Death Penalty Archive
Tags: Albert_Greenwood_Brown, Death_Penalty, Michael_Angelo_Morales
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Well, at least the State of California has found sodium thiopental to execute Albert Greenwood Brown.
Good news for those who believe in the concept “lex talionis” is bad news for Albert Greenwood Brown.
California’s prisons have located an elusive drug needed to resume executions. That is the last thing that convicted killer and rapist Albert Greenwood Brown wanted to hear.
The San Quentin inmate has had his execution on hold since Sept. 29 when a national shortage of the drug sodium thiopental forced delays in lethal injection killings across the country.
The drug is the first of three drugs administered during capital punishment sentences in California. But the country’s only domestic supplier of the drug had production problems that search state prison systems to search globally for supplies.
California’s prison department ultimately ended up giving a British company $36,415 for 521 grams of the drug that expire in 2014. Brown’s execution has been rescheduled.
But, Brown will NOT be executed anytime soon due to the anti-death penalty Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel who started the charade of the three drug cocktail “cruel and unusual punishment” argument to prevent California executions years ago.
Here is the latest on the appeals:
A federal judge in San Jose refused a state request Friday for dismissal of part of a lawsuit challenging California’s lethal injection procedures for executions.
But U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said he intends to resolve the lawsuit by two death row inmates “as expeditiously as possible.” He scheduled a status conference on the case for Dec. 17.
Inmates Michael Morales and Albert Greenwood Brown, who both face death sentences for murders of teenage girls in the early 1980s, claim the state’s three-drug execution procedure carries a risk of causing unconstitutional severe pain.
The state contends that any problems were corrected in a revised lethal injection protocol completed earlier this year.
State attorneys had asked Fogel to dismiss two out of three claims in the lawsuit. The first claim is that the revised protocol is unconstitutional “on its face,” or under all circumstances. The second claim is a contention that there is a reasonable alternative to the current procedure.
The state did not seek early dismissal of a third claim that the procedure is unconstitutional when actually applied by corrections officials.
Fogel said in a 15-page ruling that lawyers for Morales and Brown had presented enough preliminary information to allow the two challenged claims to remain in the case along with the third claim. He wrote that the claims “cannot simply be dismissed as implausible.”The judge also said the inmates had presented an adequate minimum basis for arguing in later proceedings that a single-drug execution, using only the sedative sodium thiopental, might be a reasonable alternative.
Three drugs, one drug – what difference does it really make? Other states have been executing murderers for the over five years that California has been frakking around with drug cocktail combinations and drug availability.
I have to say the administration of Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger has been diligent in pursuing the California Death Penalty Law. Read about how the California Department of Corrections secured their stash of sodium thiotental (sodium pentothal). The original ACLU document dump is here.
But, Albert Greenwood Brown will NOT be executed anytime soon – after almost 30 years of appeals. Anti-death penalty Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris were elected in November and they both will drag their feet on executing anyone.
As the Albert Greenwood Brown case languishes in the courts, the death penalty law will not be enforced in California. Moreover, I am waiting for the initiative to come before California voters to change the law using costs as the prime argument.
There will be NO justice for the victims of Albert Greenwood Brown and Michael Morales, et. al on Death Row.
Previous:
Shocker: Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel Stays Thursday Execution of Albert Greenwood Brown
Updated: U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Orders a New Hearing for Albert Greenwood Brown – U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel Calls for Briefs
Albert Greenwood Brown’s Execution Delayed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel Clears Path for California Executions to Resume – But Will They?
California Executions to Resume? Albert Greenwood Brown Would Be Next
California Executions May Resume By the End of 2008
Michael Morales Watch: US Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection Executions
Michael Morales Watch: Lethal Injection Hearings Delayed Again
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Halts Construction of San Quentin Death Chamber
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: New San Quentin Death Chamber Under Construction
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Schwarzenegger Proposes Revised 5-Point Lethal Injection Protocol
Michael Morales Watch: Judge Jeremy Fogel Rules California Method of Lethal Injection Violates a Constitutional Ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Postponed INDEFINITELY
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Tonight?
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Delayed by Doctor Walk Out
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: United States Supreme Court Refuses to Halt Morales Execution
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Denies Clemency Petition
Michael Angelo Moreno Watch: State Agrees to Place Anesthesia Expert in Death Chamber
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Lawyers Withdraw Allegedly Faked Juror Statements Supporting Their Clemency Bid
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Federal Judge May Delay Execution
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Ventura County Judge Asks California Governor Schwarzenegger for Clemency
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Kenneth Starr to Assist Death Row Clemency Bid
Tags: Albert_Greenwood_Brown, Death_Penalty
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Well, maybe. But, I would not hold my breath for the resumption of California executions anytime soon.
California reportedly has enough of a scarce lethal injection drug to go ahead with up to four executions.
The U.S. maker of sodium thiopental has said the company will not make any more batches until next year, and opposes its use for capital punishment. But somehow California procured some. Seven of the 700-plus death row inmates have exhausted all of their appeals and are eligible to be executed.
Somewhere in San Quentin, the state has locked up a new supply of scarce sodium thiopental, one of the drugs used to execute death row inmates.
All the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would say is the department obtained it legally and within the United States.
Even Governor Schwarzenegger isn’t saying.
“Have I seen it? The drug? No. But apparently we have it in the state,” said Schwarzenegger.
In court filings, the state says it has obtained 12 grams with an expiration date of 2014, enough to execute four inmates. The expiration date was an issue when convicted rapist and murderer Albert Greenwood Brown was set to be executed September 30, but wasn’t.
Because the last stock of sodium thiopental the state had expired that day, a judge called off the execution, citing the drug’s shelf life as one of the reasons.
Now death penalty advocates are calling on executions to resume. They say it doesn’t matter where the drug came from.
With Jerry Brown as the new California Governor, I doubt he will push for any speedy application of the death penalty (since he is personally opposed to it and remember he appointed Rose Bird as Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court). However, Los Angeles County District Attorney, Steve Cooley is currently ahead in the recent race for California Attorney General and unlike his opponent, San Francisco District Attorney, Kamala Harris, he supports the death penalty.
Should Steve Cooley win election, the foot dragging from the State of California should cease unless Governor Jerry Brown elects to pardon or grant clemency to these inmates – some who have been waiting for decades to be executed.
But, then again, the courts both federal and state will be used to delay the process.
Come on, why does it matter where the sodium thiopental comes from?
How about some justice for these criminal’s victims?
Previous:
California Calls Off the Scheduled Execution of Albert Greenwood Brown – FINALLY
Shocker: Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel Stays Thursday Execution of Albert Greenwood Brown
Updated: U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Orders a New Hearing for Albert Greenwood Brown – U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel Calls for Briefs
Albert Greenwood Brown’s Execution Delayed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel Clears Path for California Executions to Resume But Will They?
California Executions to Resume? Albert Greenwood Brown Would Be Next
California Executions May Resume By the End of 2008
Michael Morales Watch: US Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection Executions
Michael Morales Watch: Lethal Injection Hearings Delayed Again
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Halts Construction of San Quentin Death Chamber
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: New San Quentin Death Chamber Under Construction
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Schwarzenegger Proposes Revised 5-Point Lethal Injection Protocol
Michael Morales Watch: Judge Jeremy Fogel Rules California Method of Lethal Injection Violates a Constitutional Ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Postponed INDEFINITELY
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Tonight?
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Delayed by Doctor Walk Out
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: United States Supreme Court Refuses to Halt Morales Execution
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Denies Clemency Petition
Michael Angelo Moreno Watch: State Agrees to Place Anesthesia Expert in Death Chamber
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Lawyers Withdraw Allegedly Faked Juror Statements Supporting Their Clemency Bid
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Federal Judge May Delay Execution
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Ventura County Judge Asks California Governor Schwarzenegger for Clemency
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Kenneth Starr to Assist Death Row Clemency Bid
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Albert Greenwood Brown, the next to die under California Death Penalty law?
After many days of legal maneuvers and machinations, the scheduled execution of Albert Greenwood Brown has been called off by the State of California.
State officials called off the scheduled execution of a convicted murderer Wednesday, hours after the California Supreme Court intervened in the case and made it all but impossible to carry out the death sentence.
The attorney general’s office had begun the day by asking a federal appeals court to allow the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown Jr. to proceed but later asked the court to dismiss the request. Brown had been scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 9 p.m. Thursday.
“A new execution date will be sought in accordance with applicable law and in conformity with all court orders,” said Christine Gasparac, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office.
The high court said a separate challenge of the state’s protocol for lethal injection remains pending, and the state cannot proceed until that is resolved. That challenge was brought by other death row inmates in Marin County Superior Court.
And, since the appeal will not be decided by Friday when the sodium thiopental drug expires, California will not be able to execute Brown or any other inmate on Death row until sometime during the first quarter of 2011.
In the meantime, while the California Supreme Court was working its will, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied Browm clemency.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied a request for clemency Wednesday for a convicted murderer and rapist at the center of a frenetic legal battle over whether California should resume executions after a nearly five-year gap.
Attorneys for Albert Greenwood Brown had asked the governor to reduce his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole, arguing that jurors in his 1982 murder trial never heard about the full extent of the mental impairment that affected his ability to control his impulses.
But Schwarzenegger noted that other courts had reviewed the same evidence and concluded it would not have affected the outcome of Brown’s trial. In addition, the governor cited the brutality of Brown’s crime and the “overwhelming” evidence pointing to his guilt.
Brown was convicted of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl. Prosecutors accused him of making taunting phone calls to the victim’s mother after the girl vanished.
“The guilt and aggravating evidence is overwhelming, and the mitigation evidence is just the opposite,” Schwarzenegger wrote in his clemency denial. “Brown’s jury reasonably concluded that a penalty of death was appropriate in this case, and I have no reason to disagree.”
But, alas, Brown will NOT be executed tomorrow and all of his criminal cronies at San Quentin Death Row will have another Thanksgiving and Christmas season to enjoy while the state and federal courts consider numerous appeals and the California Department of Corrections attempts to restock its stockpile of sodium thiopental. Too bad the victims murdered by Brown and the other murderers will not receive the justice that is due them. Many of said victims have been waiting thirty years or more.
A travesty of justice.
Previous:
Shocker: Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel Stays Thursday Execution of Albert Greenwood Brown
Updated: U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Orders a New Hearing for Albert Greenwood Brown – U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel Calls for Briefs
Albert Greenwood Brown’s Execution Delayed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel Clears Path for California Executions to Resume But Will They?
California Executions to Resume? Albert Greenwood Brown Would Be Next
California Executions May Resume By the End of 2008
Michael Morales Watch: US Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection Executions
Michael Morales Watch: Lethal Injection Hearings Delayed Again
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Halts Construction of San Quentin Death Chamber
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: New San Quentin Death Chamber Under Construction
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Schwarzenegger Proposes Revised 5-Point Lethal Injection Protocol
Michael Morales Watch: Judge Jeremy Fogel Rules California Method of Lethal Injection Violates a Constitutional Ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Postponed INDEFINITELY
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Tonight?
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Execution Delayed by Doctor Walk Out
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: United States Supreme Court Refuses to Halt Morales Execution
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Denies Clemency Petition
Michael Angelo Moreno Watch: State Agrees to Place Anesthesia Expert in Death Chamber
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Lawyers Withdraw Allegedly Faked Juror Statements Supporting Their Clemency Bid
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Federal Judge May Delay Execution
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Ventura County Judge Asks California Governor Schwarzenegger for Clemency
Michael Angelo Morales Watch: Kenneth Starr to Assist Death Row Clemency Bid
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