FEATURED POST

As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

Image
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.

Appeals court overturns injunction against executions in California

Holding cell at San Quentin's
still unused new death chamber
A state appeals court Monday removed one of the few remaining impediments to the resumption of executions in California, helping clear the way for the lethal injection of an inmate later this month.

"We are acting with the assumption that without any stay in place ... that the execution will go forward," said Chief Assistant Atty. Gen. Dane Gillette.

The state is scheduled to execute Albert Greenwood Brown, convicted of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl in 1980, on Sept. 29. But a federal judge could still delay executions, and another inmate has challenged a new lethal injection protocol.

The state has not executed anyone in nearly five years.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose halted the execution of Michael Morales in 2006 after his lawyers argued that the lethal injection procedures could expose the condemned to excruciating pain before death. Fogel has scheduled a conference on the case for Tuesday.

In 2007, a task force appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger revised the execution procedures. A Marin County judge then blocked them on the grounds they were written without public participation.

After that ruling, the California Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections redrafted the protocols and submitted them for public examination. A state office approved them in July.

Monday's decision by a court of appeal in San Francisco overturned the Marin County judge's injunction.

Source: L.A.Times, September 20, 2010

Comments

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

Biden Has 65 Days Left in Office. Here’s What He Can Do on Criminal Justice.

Alabama executes Carey Dale Grayson, carries out nation's 3rd nitrogen gas execution

Singapore executes third drug trafficker in a week

Indonesia | Bali Nine prisoners to be sent home

As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

Singapore | Imminent unlawful execution for drug trafficking

Missouri bishops urge state to refrain from executing convicted child-killer next month

Mary Jane Veloso to return to Philippines after 14-year imprisonment in Indonesia