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CA Supreme Court Blocks Execution: Delayed Due To Sodium Pentothol Shortage
Albert Greenwood Brown was to be executed today, one day before the California prisons supply of Sodium Pentothol was set to expire. Brown has been in a lengthy legal battle with California over the current 3 drug combination (Pentothol, Curare and Potassium Chloride) used for executions, claiming that it has great potential for causing sever pain and discomfort when used. His execution has been delayed and a moratorium placed on all California executions.
Inmates in California are permitted to choose the method of their execution. Having chosen lethal injection, Brown is entitled to a lethal injection which is not cruel and unusual punishment. California came up with a solution proposing to use Sodium Pentothol alone as a single agent to kill him. Enough Sodium Pentothol will stop breathing which eventually will kill an individual while keeping him unconscious through the process. This novel option was offered by California prisons without judicial review, and in an apparent attempt to complete the execution the day before the entire supply of Pentothol expired.
The Court will have none of it and the execution has been blocked, the Pentothol will expire, and it is unclear just when more Pentothol will become available due to a shortage caused by contamination during manufacturing.
From The Courthouse News Service:
(CN) – California’s highest court blocked the execution of 56-year-old Albert Greenwood Brown, who was to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday. The court unanimously denied the state’s request to use new lethal injection procedures at San Quentin State Prison.
In its order, the Supreme Court said, “The state has itself contributed to circumstances incompatible with the orderly resolution … of pending legal issues in connection with executions under the new regulations,” by choosing an execution date one day before the prison’s supply of the sedative sodium pentothal, the first of three drugs used in lethal injections, was set to expire.
The state argued that because more of the drug will not likely be available until next year, it “will likely be unable to execute Brown, or any other condemned inmate, during this year.”
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel halted the execution, saying it was “virtually impossible” for the court to evaluate whether the new execution procedure would remove the risk of Brown being subjected to an agonizing death.
The 9th Circuit had ordered the San Jose, Calif., judge to reconsider a ruling he made last week denying the stay of execution.Fogel returned with Tuesday’s ruling granting the stay, which remains in place. The execution of Brown, who was convicted in 1980 for raping and murdering a 15-year-old Riverside, Calif., girl, would have been California’s first execution since 2006.
Read the decision HERE or below.
CA Supreme Court Blocks Execution
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[...] previously reported on California’s Supreme Court blocking an execution due to sodium pentathol production [...]