Appeals court sidetracks California effort to resume executions

Mercury News ^ | 11/21/08 | Howard Mintz

[NormsRevenge]

A state appeals court Friday ensured further delays in California's already inert death penalty system, finding that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration did not follow proper procedures when it attempted to revise the state's lethal injection method to get executions back on track.

In a 14-page ruling, the San Francisco-based 1st District Court of Appeal upheld last year's decision by a Marin County judge who found state officials failed to provide public scrutiny of plans to overhaul California's execution method.

The appeals court ruling, if it stands, would force the state to go back to the drawing board in its efforts to bring the execution system into compliance with a federal judge's concerns that the current method is unconstitutional.

The appeals court ruling will have a ripple effect on California's bogged-down capital punishment system. A broader legal challenge in federal court to California's lethal injection method cannot move forward until the state comes up with a revised procedure, and that is now tied up further as a result of the appeals court's findings.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Ronald Matthias, who supervises the state's death penalty cases, was still reviewing the decision and could not predict the next step. But the state can either appeal to the California Supreme Court or move forward with public review of the proposed lethal injection reforms, and either process would take months or longer.

"We hope the state will now proceed to comply in light of the court's ruling,'' said Bradley Phillips, a lawyer for death row inmates.