Posted on 01/24/2006 3:25:24 PM PST by SmithL
SAN FRANCISCO - Like so many other administrative complaints made by California prisoners, the one filed by Michael Angelo Morales this month is squeezed onto a one-page prison form.
But Morales' message sounds an unusual note of urgency: "My execution by lethal injection is imminent and will be a cruel and unusual form of punishment."
Morales has a Feb. 21 date in the death chamber for the rape and murder of a teenage girl in Lodi. In a neat script he explains his "grave concerns."
He fears that pancuronium bromide, the second of three drugs administered in executions by California and 26 other states - yet banned by the American Veterinary Medical Association in euthanizing animals - will leave him conscious of torturous pain but paralyzed and unable to cry out.
The issue has potential for postponing Morales' death and altering California executions. State lawyers have been directed to explain why they consider the paralyzing drug necessary in a federal court hearing Thursday in San Jose.
The lawyers, citing an opinion by Dr. Mark Dershwitz, contend in a brief filed Monday that "over 99.999999999999 percent of the population would be unconscious within 60 seconds" of receiving the first of three drugs, a five-gram dose of the sedative sodium pentothal, administered before the pancuronium bromide.
According to the prosecution brief, the lawyers also will challenge whether it's the court's function to suggest a "more humane or medically acceptable execution protocol."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:7ed5djsKxrwJ:www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FAID%3D/20060111/OPED01/601110311+Michael+Angelo+Morales+lodi+murder+rape&hl=en&start=8
Published Wednesday, Jan 11, 2006
A chieving justice has been agonizingly slow for the family of Terri Lynn Winchell. Stockton's Michael Angelo Morales has been in life-or-death limbo for too long.
If full punishment is delayed for 25 years after a crime is committed and 23 years after a jury has delivered its verdict, it's time to revisit jurisprudence in America.
On the night of Jan. 8, 1981, Winchell, a Tokay High School senior, was brutally murdered, and her body was dumped in a vineyard off Peltier Road, north of Lodi.
Five days later, 1,000 people attended her funeral.
Two men were arrested. Ricky Ortega, who cooperated with the police, is spending the rest of his life in prison for setting up the slaying.
Morales, who actually carried out the cruel homicide, was sentenced to death April 25, 1983, by a Ventura County jury that convicted him of rape, conspiracy and murder with the special circumstances of torture and lying in wait.
Since then, Morales' case has been moving from the state Supreme Court to various appellate courts. It's been sent to the U.S. Supreme Court twice.
Now 45, he's on death row at San Quentin State Prison.
Finally, Morales been given a Feb. 21 execution date.
Whether you support the death penalty or not, a quarter-century is simply too long for a case such as this to be resolved.
It hasn't been fair to Morales or to Winchell's shattered family.
Convicted killers can be allowed fairness and every judicial consideration without it taking his long.
Where's the justice? Where's the closure? If the death penalty is a deterrent, it needs to loom more ominously over those who would commit such brutal and senseless crimes. Retribution needs to be administered before we forget why it's deserved.
Otherwise, we might as well forget the death penalty.
I think you're wrong. I believe those sentenced when gas was the official method get to choose, but those sentenced since injection became the official method cannot.
Shut up, Morales, and die like a man!
Well, in that case his grave concern would be he can't breathe!!!!
The official method in California is gas unless lethal injection is requested. Here's the link for all states.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=8&did=245
Sorry. Forgot to hit ctl V.
More stalling tactics. Haven't the medical properties of the "Kevorkian Cocktail" been pretty well documented by now? How many times do courts have to rule that lethal injection is NOT "cruel and unusual"?
Hang him.
the SCOTUS just stayed an execution tonight, I don't see a thread on it.
YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO ME! IT MIGHT HURT!
I think hanging is the best way. The rope is reusable. It would be even cheaper to smother the condemned man in his cell at the appointed hour.
That sounds good hang the bozo.
Well, they could do like the Filipinos and use a gradually tightened garotte around the neck of the condemned, restrained in a chair.
Better then he treated his victims.
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