June 02--REPORTING FROM SAN FRANCISCO -- Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has agreed in a settlement to propose a new lethal injection method this year, it was announced Tuesday.
California's Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a pro-death-penalty group, demanded in a lawsuit that the administration propose a new lethal injection method. The group prevailed in pretrial rulings when a judge refused to dismiss the suit and ruled that the family members of victims had standing to challenge the state.
Kent Scheidegger, the foundation's legal director, said the victims and the state reached a settlement in which the state agreed to propose a new lethal injection method within 120 days of a Supreme Court ruling that is expected this month. That ruling will decide a constitutional challenge of Oklahoma's three-drug execution method.
California's proposed new method would be subjected to public comment, a process that Scheidegger said could take about a year.
"It is not as fast as we would like, but it is an agreement that is going forward as opposed to the indefinite time we had before," he said.
Brown ordered the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in April 2012 to come up with a new execution method after courts found problems with the state's previous three-drug protocol. Supporters of capital punishment blame the wait for a new protocol on a lack of political will.
The conservative foundation sued on behalf of former UCLA and NFL star Kermit Alexander, whose mother, sister and nephews were murdered, and Bradley S. Winchell, whose sister was killed, by people who are now inmates on death row. Alexander and Winchell argued the corrections department was violating state law by failing to establish a lethal injection protocol.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed the details of the settlement and said the new proposed method will involve the use of a single drug.
"In order to comply with California's capital punishment laws, CDCR has been developing lethal injection protocol regulations," the department said in a statement. "The department has agreed to resolve pending litigation by submitting its final draft regulations for review and approval."
A spokesman for the agency has said that California's efforts have been complicated by difficulty in obtaining drugs for executions. Manufacturers, under pressure from opponents of the death penalty, have refused to sell the drugs to prisons.
UPDATE
3:22 p.m.: This post was updated include a comment from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
This story was first posted at 1:28 p.m.
