Free Republic

Note: for those who haven't followed the story, this is the federal district judge in California who has ruled that lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment because the murdering scumbag might suffer. Michael Morales had breakfast this morning. He will have lunch. He will have dinner. He will continue to breathe. Terri hasn't been able to do any of those things for over two decades. ========================================================================== Fogel, Jeremy D. Born 1949 in San Francisco, CA Federal Judicial Service:U. S. District Court, Northern District of CaliforniaNominated by William J. Clinton on September 8, 1997, to a seat vacated by Robert...

Michael Morales, the man who raped and killed Terri Winchell, a seventeen year-old girl in 1981 was supposed to be put to death early Tuesday morning, February 21, just after midnight. He was not. The man who used a hammer in smashing the young girl’s head in twelve times and then stabbing her an additional four times in the heart was AGAIN supposed to be lethally injected later on that same Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Again, he was not. His execution has now been stayed indefinitely. It may take months to finalize justice for Terri Winchell, or, if someone does...

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. -- The execution of a condemned killer was postponed early Tuesday after two anesthesiologists refused for ethical reasons to take part, and attorneys pursued a new round of court challenges that could delay the execution indefinitely. Michael Morales, 46, was supposed to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. But the execution was put off until at least Tuesday night after the anesthesiologists objected that they might have to advise the executioner if the inmate woke up or appeared to suffer pain.

For hundreds of years, doctors have been involved in executions. But their efforts to get out of this grisly business put them on a collision course this week with a federal judge who ordered that they assist in killing a California inmate. "There's been an attempt to medicalize executions all the way back to the French Revolution," when Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin invented the guillotine as a humane method of death, said University of Minnesota bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles. "Doctors then got involved again in designing electrocution for the same reason in the United States," he said. "The medical profession has...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO - The state on Tuesday postponed indefinitely the execution of a condemned killer amid a court battle over the state's method of lethal injection and the role doctors may play in the death chamber.</p> <p>State officials notified the federal courts they would be unable to comply with a judge's order to have a lethal dose of barbiturate administered to Michael Morales by a medical professional in the execution chamber, a spokeswoman for the federal courts told The Associated Press.</p>