Judge halts lethal injections in California

AP via CNN ^ | 12/15/2006 | AP

[Ramzi]

This is the Judge. No surprise who nominated him.


Fogel, Jeremy D.

Born 1949 in San Francisco, CA

Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U. S. District Court, Northern District of California
Nominated by William J. Clinton on September 8, 1997, to a seat vacated by Robert P. Aguilar; Confirmed by the Senate on March 16, 1998, and received commission on March 17, 1998.

[stumpy]

Make it totally fair. Execute them in the same manner in which they killed their victim. Then it will be neither "cruel (at least no crueler than their victim suffered), nor unfair (or more unfair than what their victim suffered except for the years of additional life they had while appealing)...

[Princip. Conservative]

"There we go again... "Small steps Ellie, small steps""

Let it be known that this a Bill Clinton-appointed federal judge who did this. Ugh. We should appeal the ruling. I hope they will. He's low on the food chain - take it right to SCOTUS, if necessary.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Drop a 5,000 lb safe on 'em from the roof of a five story building. That should be fast enough.

[Carry_Okie]

The proof that this isn't cruel is that addicts take the same drugs. The only difference is dosage.

How stupid does this have to get before the public figures these people out?

[BearCub]

The combination of chemicals used to kill the man in Florida seemed very strange to me. One to paralyze, one to anesthetize, and one to stop the heart. Why not just kill the guy quickly if you HAVE to do it?

The states all pretty much use the same stuff. A knock-out drug, one that stops breathing & one that stops the heart. Each one is given in a lethal dose all by iteself.

[george76]

It is ok with me if they use 'green' bullets on this POS.

Hanging is ok too.

These judges protect the perps but not the victims.

Sad.

[Jrabbit]

Not to worry....Scott Peterson is on death row in Ca. Most hated man in America for some. There will be a DEMAND that he be executed.

[zendari]

There are 2 vacancies there. Unfortunately Boxer and Feinstein keep stonewalling.

[Iconoclast2]

No reasonable judge is even eligible for nomination anymore.

[conservativegranny]

Maybe we should behead them instead. It seems to be the only executions that the lefties haven't whined about yet.

[txroadkill]

Just to keep this in perspective, this case is about the jury ordered execution of Michael Morales for the murder of Terri Lynn Winchell.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/20/MNGV3HBONP1.DTL

Terri Lynn Winchell left home on the last night of her life in January 1981 to help a boy she knew hated her.

That's just the way she was, friends and family said. Good-hearted. A devout believer in turning the other cheek, in giving people a second chance.

But this was a chance she should not have given.

By the end of the evening, the 17-year-old church choir singer and high school beauty lay raped, hammered and stabbed to death, her corpse sprawled between two rows of grapevines.

She had no inkling of it, but she had been caught in the middle of a love triangle gone hideously bad. Her boyfriend, unbeknownst to her, had been involved in a gay relationship with another man -- whose jealousy drove him to recruit a street thug who would take Winchell out of the picture

<snip>

According to court testimony, Morales began plotting ways to kill Winchell, practicing how to strangle someone by wrapping a belt around a female roommate's neck and cranking it tight. Once he had the technique down, he waited for the call to action. It came on a Thursday, Jan. 8, 1981.

Ortega, pretending to want to ease tensions with Winchell, called her house around 5:30 p.m. as she was heading out the door to buy food for her mother, who was ill. He told her he wanted her help buying a gift at a local shopping center. Eager to mend fences, Winchell agreed to go, relatives testified.

Ortega picked her up around 6 p.m. In the back seat was Morales, with a claw hammer, a belt and a 7-inch kitchen knife hidden and ready. He was already stoned and agitated from guzzling cheap Thunderbird wine and smoking a PCP-laced cigarette.

As night fell and the Central Valley tule fog formed, Ortega drove his car out of Lodi along lonely Peltier Road. According to court records, they were a few miles out of town when Morales suddenly cinched his belt around Winchell's neck and began strangling her. She fought back fiercely. The belt broke, so he pulled out the hammer and began bashing her head.

"She screamed for Ortega to help and attempted to fight off the attack, ripping her own hair out of her scalp in the struggle," according to a state attorney general's account. Ortega ignored her pleas and as Morales told him to keep driving he smashed her 23 times in the head, crushing the base of her neck and bloodying her arms and hands as she tried to ward off the blows.

By the time Ortega pulled over at the corner of Bender and Peltier roads, 7 miles outside Lodi, Winchell was unconscious and slumped against the passenger door. According to investigators, Morales hopped out of the car, and saying it was a shame to waste "a good piece of ass," he told Ortega to leave the two of them, drive away and come back in 15 minutes.

Morales dragged the still-unconscious Winchell face-down across the road into a vineyard. There, in the chilly darkness, he stripped her of everything but her sweater and bra, which he pulled up to her neck. Then he flipped her onto her back and raped her in the dirt.

Just before he headed back to the road, he plunged his knife four times into her chest to make sure she was dead.

 God Forbid he suffer from a lethal injection

[Frank_2001]

It looks like the wall itself is either gone or ovegrown with trees (Google Earth view shows the tennis courts and building). Nice that they preserve a building which must have been constructed before the Civil War. In a place like Miami, buildings more than 30 years old get torn down.

[doc1019]

After reviewing all the different methods of executing criminals, I find the guillotine the least “cruel” of all. Put head in place, pull cord … swish … dead.

As long as the blade is sharp there is little, if any, chance of a mistake.

Drug the criminal if necessary to satisfy the “death without pain” bunch.

The guillotine is one of the few things that the French can be proud of.

[rogator]

" One to paralyze, one to anesthetize, and one to stop the heart. "

Why is it necessary to give the drug to paralyze? If the heart is stopped there won't be a lot more breathing.
I have heard that the objections are to the paralyzing drug which they say can suffocate the convict.

[firebrand]

That's not what it sounds like to me. There was no mention of a "knock-out drug" in the news reports. That would be humane. Anyway, I'm against capital punishment, so what do I know?

[Peelod]

Just use an N2 chamber. The squash gets hypoxic and "Night, night".

::::: no after-mess, cheap, nontoxic when released to atmosphere.

Don't he look natural?

[Dog Gone]

The only drawback to the guillotine is that the head apparently can still remain aware for another 5-7 seconds after decapitation, which can't be fun.

Still, if you're executing somebody justly, you're not trying to make it a fun experience. Perhaps as with little pain as possible, but there's nothing fun about being executed even if it's entirely painless.

[firebrand]

The one where flames came out of the guy's head? Oh good. Bring it back now.

[I_Like_Spam]

A lot to be said in favor of the guillotine, particularly for use with the jihadi who I've heard have the superstition that they cannot go to the islamonazi paradise for their 72 virgins if they don't have their heads.

In addition, the guillotine can be used for efficiently chopping cabbage for the meals in the pen when there are no executions scheduled.