Albert Greenwood Brown was set to be executed on Thursday, but a federal appeals court has order that the judge reexamine the ruling on Brown’s execution. Brown was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a young high-school student in 1982 and has been on death row ever since.
The ruling under question was not intended to establish Brown’s innocence or guilt in the case, but dealt with the “narrow issue of the manner and timing of Brown's execution in a fashion that comports with the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment," the federal appeals court said. Specifically highlighted was the choice given to Brown whether he die by one or three-drug injections, which according to the appeals court is against Californian State Law.
The decision to delay the execution planned for Thursday may in fact push the execution, which will be the first in California since 2006, back into next year, as California is running low on the drugs necessary to perform the execution. The state supplies of sodium thiopental are set to expire at the end of September and will not be available until sometime early in 2011.
Brown was convicted by a jury to die for the rape and murder of the school girl, who he strangled to death with her own shoelaces. Brown’s lawyer claimed he had psychiatric problems and was remorseful of his crime, but after three hours of deliberation the jury returned the death verdict.
