California Releases Plan To Use 1 Drug In Executions
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California proposed Friday to allow corrections officials to choose one of four types of barbiturates to execute prisoners on death row depending on what's available, as states deal with a nationwide shortage of execution drugs.
The single drug would replace the series of three drugs that were last used when Clarence Ray Allen was executed in 2006, strapped to a gurney in what once was the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison.
Eight states already have used a single anesthetic drug for executions, and five others have announced plans to switch to the method, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
"What it gets us closer to is litigation over the protocol," the center's executive director, Robert Dunham, said of the proposed regulations. "No matter what drug or drug combination California proposes, there are going to be substantial issues both as to the constitutionality of the drug and the availability of the drug."
Executions in California stalled in 2006 when a federal judge ordered an overhaul of the state's lethal injection procedures and said California could resume executions if it began using a single drug.
A Marin County judge invalidated the state's subsequent attempt at drafting regulations in 2011, saying the state failed to explain why it chose the three-drug process over the one-drug method.
That led Gov. Jerry Brown to say in 2012 that California would consider a single-drug lethal injection. However, the process lagged for three years in part because of a nationwide shortage of execution drugs, officials said.
The process was jump-started this year after a judge sided with the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which sued on behalf of relatives of murder victims who said they are affected by the long delay in executions. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation agreed to propose the new regulations to settle the lawsuit.
"I'm very pleased that we have started this ball rolling. Resumption of executions in California is at least a foreseeable possibility now," said Kent Scheidegger, the foundation's legal director.
The one-drug proposal now faces a 62-day public comment period.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
