Posted on 01/06/2010 6:20:23 PM PST by NormsRevenge
The state released its revised lethal injection guidelines Tuesday, inching one step closer to resuming executions in California, beginning with Stockton's Michael Angelo Morales.
The changes follow a June public hearing when death penalty foes from around the world converged on Sacramento to speak out against the procedure.
They also mailed in more than 8,000 letters addressing the protocol.
The public now has until Jan. 20 to comment on the changes.
The 25-page document indicates small revisions, from defining a "chaplain" and the "lethal injection room" to clarifying that the curtains remain open in the execution chamber until after the inmate is pronounced dead.
A staunch opponent maintains the state is wasting time and money to push for executions when California's finances are thin.
She criticized the revisions as superficial.
"It is shocking," said Natasha Minsker, Death Penalty Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California. "In the current state of the state, we are still wasting money tinkering with the death penalty system."
Minsker proposed turning death sentences to permanent imprisonment for inmates sentenced to death. She said the state could save $1 billion over five years if it eliminated capital punishment.
California has 697 condemned inmates, including about a dozen sentenced for crimes committed in San Joaquin County.
Feb. 20 will mark four years since Morales, 50, put the brakes on all California executions.
Morales was convicted for the 1981 rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell of Stockton.
His 2006 execution was indefinitely delayed under arguments lethal injection could expose Morales to cruel and unusual punishment.
That battle played out before U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose.
In a parallel fight at the Marin County Superior Court, Morales' attorneys forced the state to open up its revised execution procedure for the first time to public comment before adopting it.
Terry Thornton, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman, said the public review process has several steps before finally being adopted.
"If during the next comment period it requires more changes, we have to put it out again," she said. The state has until May 1 to complete its public review process.
Morales' case will then return to Fogel's San Jose courtroom. It remains unclear when California will resume executions and his death sentence will be carried out.
Best guestimate, at least a year or more away from any lethal injections on convicted murderers.
those people opposing lethal injection, should have to pay to keep these people alive and behind bars themselves.
I hear ya. The Amalgamated Criminal Lovers Union can afford it.
I think more CA death row inmates have died of natural causes the last decade than were executed.
Where’s Judge Roy Bean when we need him. :)
The state needs to save money anyway it can.
A firing squad could be raised by asking for volunteers.
>>>Looks like instead of a cocktil, they will use a single drug to Git R Done.
As best as I have been able to reason it out, the only truly humane form of execution is a bullet in the back of the head. The communists had this much right at least. Instantaneous death as the brain explodes before it can consciously register the moment. Zero suffering by the condemned. Inexpensive and certain.
Only problem, it is cruel to the executioners.
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