California set to resume executions

[genghis61]

California set to resume executions
AP
25/09/2010

A federal judge cleared the way for California's first execution in nearly five years, citing the state's efforts to revise its lethal injection procedure and a Supreme Court ruling making it more difficult for condemned inmates to delay their executions.

Barring successful appeals to other courts, convicted killer and rapist Albert Greenwood Brown is scheduled to die on Wednesday, after US District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel refused to block the execution.

Brown failed to show ''a demonstrated risk of severe pain'' as required by a 2008 US Supreme Court ruling upholding Kentucky's lethal injection process, the judge said in his ruling.

Brown's execution would be the first in the state since Fogel placed a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in California and ordered prison officials to overhaul the process in 2006.

The attorney general's office told Fogel this week the state has complied with his order by building a new death chamber at San Quentin State Prison, revising its training regimen and adopting new lethal injection regulations.

Fogel gave Brown the option of choosing a one-drug injection of sodium thiopental instead of a three-drug cocktail used by the state to put condemned inmates to death.

The judge said it appeared the one-drug lethal injection was less risky than the three-drug cocktail when it came to causing pain.

''The fact that nine single-drug executions have been carried out in Ohio and Washington without any apparent difficulty is undisputed and significant,'' Fogel wrote.

Brown can still pursue at least two legal avenues to stop his execution. He can ask the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Fogel's decision. His attorneys already plan to ask a judge to halt the execution while a lawsuit challenging the new lethal injection regulations is pending.

Fogel ordered the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to overhaul its lethal injection process in response to a lawsuit filed by death row inmate Michael Morales, who came within two hours of a lethal injection in February 2006 before prison officials canceled his execution and conceded they couldn't immediately comply with the judge's orders.

Since then, the state spent more than $US800,000 ($NZ1.1 million) constructing a new death chamber at San Quentin prison and revised how its execution team is selected and trained.

Brown's lawyers argued that the judge should personally inspect the new death chamber and extensively review the new training procedures before allowing executions to resume. They also questioned how Brown came to be picked as the next inmate scheduled for execution when Morales was atop the list five years ago.

Brown is among several death row inmates who have gone completely through their state and federal appeals. Lawyers with the attorney general's office said execution dates for at least four other inmates, including Morales, are expected to be scheduled soon.

Attorney general spokeswoman Christine Gasparac said her office notifies county prosecutors when a death row inmate has exhausted all of his appeals.

The office also informs the county prosecutors of the prison department's schedule and available execution dates. From there, the district attorneys obtain an execution date from their local court, which is what happened in Albert Brown's case.

Brown was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 15-year-old Susan Jordan several weeks after his release from prison where he had served time for another rape.

Investigators said Brown called Jordan's mother several times on the day of her disappearance, taunting her with messages that she will never again see her daughter alive.

[genghis61]

Judge rules to resume executions in California
24 September 2010

US District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled today to resume the death penalty in California, ending a 4-year moratorium he imposed in 2006, when he ruled that the state’s three-drug method of lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In 2007, Governor Schwarzenegger named a special panel to rewrite those procedures behind closed doors. That effort was ultimately ruled illegal, but corrections officials began seeking the public’s input and rewriting the protocols. The state adopted those new regulations on August 29. No one had sought to resume executions until a Riverside County judge last month set September 29th as the execution date for Albert Greenwood Brown, who was convicted in the 1980 rape and murder of a 15 year-old girl.

Judge Fogel ruled this afternoon to deny a stay of execution for Brown but entitled him to choose execution using a single drug, sodium thiopental, instead of the newly revised three drug protocol. If Brown elects execution by this method and the state refuses, then the execution would be stayed. But if Brown doesn’t ask for the single drug lethal injection, then California can execute him using the newly revised 3 drug cocktail method.

[genghis61]

Full AP article here

Prison officials provided a tour Tuesday to showcase recent upgrades at San Quentin, including separate eyewitness areas for the victim and inmate families, and a holding cell with a phone and flat-screen television.

Prison spokesman Lt. Sam Robinson said the two-year-old lethal injection facility is fully prepared to carry out the execution of convicted murderer Albert Greenwood Brown next Wednesday.

California attorneys say prison officials have constructed a new death chamber that is roomier and better lit than the previous facility, which Fogel found too cramped and dingy to legally carry out executions. Above all, prison officials said they have specially selected a well-trained staff to carry out the lethal injections, which require the proper handling of the three-drug cocktail used in the executions.

*************
G61 says . . .
the flat screen tv is a nice touch - does he get to select his favourite dvd along with final meal?

[Tunaka]

Career whingers tend to weep for the murderers more than they do for the victims, but that's more or less expected nowadays.

"Career Whingers" is a good term. The US is filled with whingers, that whinge just about everything imaginable.

I am not sure if this is a new phenomenon and if it was always this way. A new national past time stirred in part, by the mainstream media which perpetuates the constant drum of Gloom & Doom.

[gingsa]

Odd isn't it that some in America are more concerned about making the foul killers comfortable instead of avenging the innocent people who are killed. A mis=placed priority for sure.

[keda]

It's never their fault, always someone or something else caused them to do it. Sod them, murder someone and expect to die and if you don't wanna die then don't murder.

Can't see what's so complicated in that, but no doubt some ideologically driven 'progressive' will be right along to shine the light.

[Mid]

avenging the innocent people who are killed.

does that include the ones on death row

the choice between executing an innocent man and having a guilty one walk free is easy for me

no capital punishment .

[keda]

That's a fair argument, but there are also cases where the evidence is so overwhelming that the rat confesses and reconstructs the event hoping that will earn him clemency, and it's obviously these being referred to. I don't think anyone's suggesting some guy should be executed because he was arrested and the desk sergeant decided to charge him.

What I can't abide by is where after conviction the murderer comes clean (and I do know confessions can be coerced or even freely offered by innocent idiots for a brief window of notoriety) and tries it on with the common enough mitigation that he was depressed at the time or his goldfish died, he lost his job or needed money because he was too lazy to work like a normal human being. That's from the side of the murderer trying to work the system.

Then we have the bleeding hearts for whom nobody deserves to die for any reason, not even the scum that kidnaps, rapes and sexually abuses, tortures and buries alive a young girl. And not even, they proudly add, as though it somehow makes them superior, people like Hitler and Pol Pot. These are where the differences of opinion originate.

[Indian Jones]

State sponsored murder is simply wrong and places the US in the same room with like-minded systems in the Sudan, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Add to this the sad fact that; the majority of those executed are minorities with little financial backing, the state murdering juveniles and mentally underdeveloped etc etc.

Is it still being viewed as a deterrent? Does anyone actually believe that? Yes, yes, it is a deterrent to the person being executed, or some other odd reasoning may be employed.

As Mid said, how many innocent people have been murdered by the state?

[genghis61]

Governor delays execution for Riverside killer
09:25 PM PDT on Monday, September 27, 2010

By RICHARD K. DE ATLEY
The Press-Enterprise


Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delayed until Thursday the execution of a man facing death by lethal injection for the kidnap, rape and murder of a Riverside schoolgirl 30 years ago.

California Department of Corrections
Albert Greenwood Brown Jr.

Schwarzenegger ordered the reprieve Monday for Albert Greenwood Brown Jr. because the time to petition the state Supreme Court to hear an appeal regarding Brown's case expires Sept. 30 -- one day after Brown's previously scheduled execution time of 12:01 a.m Wednesday.

His execution time is now 9 p.m. Thursday. The 45-hour reprieve pushes the execution to within hours of the Friday expiration date on the state's supply of sodium thiopental, one of the drugs used in the lethal injection process. A new supply is not expected until January.

Brown, 56, was first sentenced to die for the murder of 15-year-old Susan Louise Jordan in 1982. He would be the first person executed in California since early 2006.

"I did expect some kind of delay -- that's what happens," said James Jordan, Susan's brother, who plans to attend the execution along with sister Karen Jordan Brown. "I expected something, to be honest."

Brown abducted Susan Jordan on Oct. 28. 1980, as she walked along Victoria Avenue in Riverside on her way to Arlington High School. The girl was raped and strangled with one of her shoelaces.

Later that evening, Brown made taunting phone calls to Jordan's mother, telling her she would never see her daughter again, then hinted about where her body could be found in an orange grove.

He was arrested a few days later and has been in custody ever since.

An appeals court on Sept. 20 overturned a Marin County Superior Court ruling that ordered the state to refrain from carrying out lethal injection executions. The permitted time for appeal does not end until Sept. 30.

"This is a legal technicality and we anticipate the execution moving forward," said Riverside County district attorney spokesman John Hall.

Schwarzenegger also is considering a clemency request from Brown.

"The reprieve has nothing to do with his clemency request. It's to allow Mr. Brown to exhaust all his appeals under the law," said Rachel Arrezola, a Schwarzenegger spokeswoman.

Schwarzenegger's decision on whether to grant clemency to Brown is expected as soon as today .

[genghis61]

Cooper execution faces more delays with shortage of drug needed for lethal injection

Neil Nisperos, Staff Writer
Posted: 09/27/2010 1039 PM PDT

The shortage of a drug necessary for lethal injections may again delay the execution of death row inmate Kevin Cooper, convicted of killing four people in Chino Hills nearly 30 years ago.

The announcement Monday of a shortage of the coma- inducing sodium thiopental, however, is not expected to stop the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown on Thursday evening, which would be the state's first execution in nearly five years.

The attorney general said Monday there would be no more executions until more supplies of the drug are available.

That helps attorneys for Cooper, who is on death row for the 1983 murders of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 11-year-old Christopher Hughes, who was staying the night with the Ryens after attending a barbecue with them.

All four were hacked to death with a hatchet and hunting knife inside the Ryens' hilltop home, two days after Cooper escaped from California Institution for Men in Chino. The Ryens' 8-year-old son, Joshua, survived despite a slashed throat.

Cooper's attorneys are continuing their lengthy appeals, attempting to prove he was convicted in error.

********************
Convicted killer Kevin Cooper, sentenced to death, fights for his life

Kevin Cooper sits on California's Death Row for the most notorious mass murder in San Bernardino County history - the 1983 hatchet and knife massacre of three members of a Chino Hills family and their young houseguest. Cooper, a repeat criminal who escaped from a nearby prison two days before the killings, claims he is innocent and that sheriff's investigators framed him for crimes committed by three white men.

In 2001, Cooper became the first Death Row inmate in California to get post-conviction DNA tests of evidence. Those tests found his DNA on several key pieces of evidence, supporting his guilt.

He was nearly executed Feb. 10, 2004, but a federal appellate court stayed the execution with less than eight hours to spare

[genghis61]

Federal judge blocks California execution

By Howard Mintz
Posted: 09/28/2010 0848 PM PDT

California's chief justice has often called the state's death penalty system "dysfunctional." The frantic final days before Albert Greenwood Brown's scheduled execution may be proving him right once again.

A San Jose federal judge on Tuesday reversed course and granted Brown a reprieve just two days before his scheduled execution, concluding that he didn't have enough time to complete his legal review of whether California's new lethal injection procedures protect a death-row inmate against a cruel and inhumane death. Unless overturned by a federal appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel's ruling ensures that California will not be able to carry out its first execution in nearly five years.

In an unprecedented quirk, California will run out of one of the three drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection on Friday, and Fogel's decision to grant a stay means the state will not be able to execute Brown -- or any other inmate -- until at least sometime next year.

The 56-year-old Brown, who had already ordered his last meal of steak and onion rings, was scheduled to die at 9 p.m. Thursday.

Fogel, in his ruling, vowed to try to resolve the ongoing challenge to lethal injection by the end of the year, but blamed state officials for rushing to set an execution date.

More at: Federal judge blocks California execution - San Jose Mercury News

[keda]

The only good I can see in the stay of execution, is that he didn't get his steak and onion rings.

[Tunaka]

In an unprecedented quirk, California will run out of one of the three drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection on Friday, and Fogel's decision to grant a stay means the state will not be able to execute Brown -- or any other inmate -- until at least sometime next year.

I knew California was dysfunctional, but this really sums it up.

I don't are either way. Whether he's executed some day or not, how much taxpayer funds have been squandered on legal fees and his other expenses?

Who really loses, here?

[Pol the Pot]

I don't get the whole idea of trying to kill somebody 'humanely'.

Off with the head, that's it. Tried and tested method available from France.

[genghis61]

California says it won't resume executions this year
May 3, 2011

California corrections officials have put off until at least next year any attempt to resume executions among the 713 condemned inmates on death row, according to court documents.

The request by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to delay review of newly revised lethal-injection protocols until January at the earliest follows a decision last week by Gov. Jerry Brown to scrap plans to build a new death row facility at San Quentin State Prison.

The steps have stirred speculation among death-penalty opponents that California might be drawn into the national trend away from seeking new executions.

The most recent postponement was due to San Quentin warden Michael Martel's decision to replace the execution team that had been assembled and trained last year. That team had been ready to carry out executions last September. Corrections officials have declined to say why Martel is assembling a new execution team.

The internal corrections department revisions were disclosed during a meeting of the department's lawyers last week with U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel. The San Jose judge overseeing a federal case that has halted executions for the last five years expressed frustration with the protracted process and concern that the public doesn't understand why it has taken so long to correct flaws in the execution procedures.

UC Santa Cruz professor Craig Haney, who opposes capital punishment and has tracked public attitudes on the death penalty for 30 years, said Brown's decision to scuttle new death row construction to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and the corrections department's slowing down of its efforts to resume executions are "examples of the increasing signs that the death penalty's days are numbered in the United States."

"I can't say that it will be next week or next month or next year, but the trends have now become too unmistakably clear to ignore," Haney said, adding that he doubted Brown has any "grand design" to commute California death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole but that the governor might be on a path to preparing voters for an inevitable move to end them.

Fogel also asked lawyers for death row inmates who have exhausted their appeals whether they expected further delays due to concerns about the origin and effectiveness of the main drug used in lethal injection, sodium thiopental, which the state now imports because the sole U.S. manufacturer has ceased production. The attorneys said they hadn't yet formally challenged the state on the drug issue but indicated it might be part of their appeals strategy later.

An attorney for death row inmate Michael A. Morales, whose February 2006 execution was called off by Fogel over concerns that the former procedures could inflict unconstitutional pain, said the latest delays reflect a more cautious approach in the exercise of capital punishment by Brown's administration.

"It appears that the state is attempting to be diligent in their obligations under the law, which would be in stark departure from what was the case with Governor [Arnold] Schwarzenegger," said David Senior, one of Morales' attorneys.

[dirtydog]

barbaric animals those merikans.

[genghis61]

May 4, 2011 10:53 AM
Texas puts rapist Cary Kerr to death with new lethal injection cocktail



(CBS/AP) HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Cary Kerr, convicted of raping and strangling 34-year-old Pamela Horton in 2001, became the first inmate in Texas to be put to death using a new three-drug lethal injection cocktail.

The 46-year-old expressed love and thanks to friends and relatives, then insisted he wasn't responsible for the crime outside Fort Worth.

Kerr's reaction to the lethal injection chemicals was similar to most of the 466 inmates executed in Texas since 1982 under the previous drug combination.

He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. CDT, nine minutes after the drugs began flowing into his arms.

A late appeal rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court did not challenge the drug switch in the nation's most active capital punishment state. Instead, it focused on a claim that one of his lawyers earlier had failed him during appeals of his conviction and death sentence.

The three-drug chemical cocktail in his lethal injection used the sedative pentobarbital instead of sodium thiopental. Texas recently switched from sodium thiopental, a drug it used since 1982, because it is no longer available. Pentobarbital already had been used for recent executions in Oklahoma and Ohio and survived legal challenges there.

Attorneys for Kerr, a former laborer and truck driver, argued unsuccessfully that a lawyer didn't properly represent him during appeals of his conviction.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review an Alabama case that has similar circumstances, and another Texas inmate last month won a last-day reprieve by raising a similar claim.

************
other article added this:



He is the third to be executed in Texas this year. Timothy Adams was lethally injected February 22 for the 2002 murder of his 18-month-old son. Michael Wayne Hall was put to death February 11 for the 1998 torture killing of Amy Robinson, a 19-year-old mentally challenged woman from Arlington.

The former Dallas man had a sizable request for his last meal, including a cheeseburger and fries, spaghetti and lasagna, pizza, fried mushrooms, tacos, pork ribs, fried and baked chicken, quiche, and ice cream.

Kerr's last words were, "The state of Texas, I am an innocent man. Never trust a court-appointed attorney. I am ready, warden."

[Gerbil]

The former Dallas man had a sizable request for his last meal, including a cheeseburger and fries, spaghetti and lasagna, pizza, fried mushrooms, tacos, pork ribs, fried and baked chicken, quiche, and ice cream.

Aiming for a heart attack to save him first?

[sabang]

^^ I could have told them about lao khao years ago.

In the ultra litigious society that is the modern USA, Capital punishment is a waste of money and resources. Just let them rot.

[larvidchr]

There is a big huha going in the Danish press about Pentobarbital just now, it is produced outside Denmark but by a Danish medical company called Lundbeck, the company have expressed shock and anger over the fact that their product is used at US executions, and have written letters to several states (Ohio-Texas etc.) asking them not to use the chemical to executions, according to Lundbeck the chemical is not developed and tested for that purpose.

The product is used to help people with certain severe brain disorders like epilepticus.

However Lundbeck states that the only way to stop the use at executions is to withdraw the product from the market completely, but that they cant do that since it is helping far to many people.

[Boon Mee]

barbaric animals those merikans.

So you approve of Charlie Manson and his girls then?

[Pol the Pot]

There is a big huha going in the Danish press about Pentobarbital just now, it is produced outside Denmark but by a Danish medical company called Lundbeck, the company have expressed shock and anger over the fact that their product is used at US executions, and have written letters to several states (Ohio-Texas etc.) asking them not to use the chemical to executions, according to Lundbeck the chemical is not developed and tested for that purpose.

The product is used to help people with certain severe brain disorders like epilepticus.

However Lundbeck states that the only way to stop the use at executions is to withdraw the product from the market completely, but that they cant do that since it is helping far to many people.

Lip service. That's all. They'll continue selling.

They're in the business of making money after all.

[genghis61]

Convicted Texas killer executed: 'I am at peace'
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press 3 June 2011

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Convicted killer Gayland Bradford was executed Wednesday for the $7 robbery-slaying of a Dallas grocery store security guard almost 23 years ago.

In a final statement, Bradford, 42, thanked friends for being with him "through thick and thin."

"I am at peace," he said. "We have no worries, just as I have no more worries. To the victim's family, may you be at peace also."

As the lethal drugs took effect, he gasped a couple of times, then began snoring, each breath progressively fainter. Nine minutes later, at 6:25 p.m., he was pronounced dead.

Bradford already was on parole for a robbery conviction when he was arrested for gunning down 29-year-old Brian Williams four days after Christmas in 1988. The shooting came on Williams' second day on the job at the market a few miles south of downtown Dallas.

Williams' mother and brother were among the people in the death chamber, watching through a window just a few feet from Bradford.

"We have no anger towards Mr. Bradford and forgive him of his crime against our family," Williams' brother, Gregory, said in a statement released following the punishment. "We now turn our thoughts and prayers to Mr. Bradford's family and friends and pray that God will give them the strength, comfort and understanding as they now grieve the loss of their loved one."

The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to reconsider an appeal they rejected earlier, clearing the way for Bradford to become the fourth Texas prisoner executed this year. Three more lethal injections are set for this month in the nation's busiest capital punishment state.

more

[saxpression]

That A. Brown guy looks like Danny Glover. Too bad it ain't. Only kidding.