Legal News

Appellate court keeps lethal injection on back burner

By Richard Binder

Death penalty opponents and the attorneys for two condemned men at San Quentin won another round in their quest to delay executions in California when a state appeals court on Friday held that newly revised rules for administering lethal injections are illegal. The ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco means the execution chamber is likely to remain idle through much of 2009, if not longer, pending a likely appeal to the California Supreme Court and possibly another lengthy review and redrafting of the procedures.

Executions have been officially suspended since December 2006, when U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose ruled that the state's method of administering the three-drug lethal injection cocktail amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution. Before Fogel could pass judgment on whether the new procedures were acceptable, attorneys for death row inmates Michael Morales and Mitchell Sims challenged the legality of the measures because they hadn't been submitted for public comment, as required by state law.

The state has the largest death row population in the country, with 677 condemned to die.

Read full story here with commentary at Legal Pad here.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on November 24, 2008 (boomark / email).