Officials: Calif governor delays execution by 45 hours to allow time for appeals

Calif gov delays execution to allow appeals time

SAN FRANCISCO — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delayed the state’s first execution since 2006 by nearly two days Monday to allow more time for courts to consider the condemned inmate’s appeals.

Albert Greenwood Brown is now scheduled to die by lethal injection at 9 p.m. Thursday, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Brown initially was scheduled for execution at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

Brown’s attorneys have filed simulataneous appeals to the federal courts and state courts, seeking to block his execution on the grounds that the state improperly adopted its new lethal injection procedures. They allege that execution under the new regulations would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The 45-hour reprieve pushes the execution to within hours of the expiration date on the state’s supply of sodium thiopental, one of the drugs used in the lethal injection process.

The attorney general’s office said Monday that it would recommend not scheduling any more executions after Sept. 30 until the state could secure a fresh supply of the drug, an anesthetic that renders the condemned inmate unconscious before lethal drugs are injected.

The delay was imposed by Schwarzenegger just hours after Marin County Superior Court Judge Verna Adams refused to block Brown’s execution after he argued in a lawsuit that California’s new death penalty regulations were improperly adopted.

“Mr. Brown cannot prove that he will suffer pain if he is executed under the current regulations,” Adams said.

A federal judge ruled similarly on Friday after Brown contended California’s lethal injection process put him at risk of suffering cruel and unusual punishment.

Brown was convicted of abducting, raping and killing a 15-year-old girl on her way home from school in 1980.