Free Republic

California's death penalty has been in limbo since 2006, when a federal judge stayed the execution of Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the brutal 1981 murder and rape of 17-year-old Terri Winchell. The judge was fearful lest the state's three-drug lethal injection protocol would cause Morales undue pain. Since then, a number of states have switched to a one-drug protocol. Why hasn't California? The answer could be that Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris don't want the death penalty to work. Brown and Harris are personally opposed to the death penalty, but when they campaigned...

nvestigators Build a Case Linking Chemical DOPAL to Illness In new research from Saint Louis University, investigators have found evidence that a toxin produced by the brain is responsible for the series of cellular events that lead to Parkinson's disease. The study, published in PLoS One, found that the brain toxin DOPAL plays a key role in killing the dopamine neurons which trigger the illness. In earlier research, Saint Louis University investigators found that DOPAL seemed to be responsible for killing healthy dopamine cells, which in turn causes Parkinson disease to develop. Now, research in an animal model gives them...