What a joke.
More inmates die on death row in California from old age than execution... (/trolling comment) ;-)
A few more details on this judge from Big Lizards blog:
If I Should Ouch Before I Die
Crime and Punishment
Hatched by Dafydd
According to the Sacramento Bee, a California federal judge has jumped on the bandwagon of banning lethal injection as a method of executing Michael Morales — for the rape, brutal beating, and cold-blooded murder of seventeen year old Teri Winchell — because lethal injection might be painful (hat tip to Bee-blogger Daniel Weintraub).
The judge, Jeremy Fogel (appointed by Bill Clinton in 1997, Harvard Law 1974, Northern California practice and judgeship), hasn’t yet finally ruled on the question or issued a stay — which, unless the Supreme Court overturns the stay, would probably delay the execution months or even years — but he did make it clear that he is likely to do so:
California must either scrap plans to execute Michael Angelo Morales next week or change the way it will put the condemned inmate to death, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, responding to a defense challenge that the state’s method of carrying out lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, gave state authorities the option of defending their current procedure in a two-day court hearing.
The judge said official state logs “in at least six of 13 executions by lethal injection” raise “at least some doubt” whether inmates were rendered unconscious before being injected with chemicals that would cause “excruciating pain.”
Note, this is the very same case where Morales’ defense team (including Ken Starr) previously filed fraudulent affidavits from several jurors, claiming that they had changed their minds and now wanted Morales not to be executed. When the DA’s office discovered that the affidavits were forged, the defense team had to withdraw them.