U.S. District
Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose has denied a stay of execution to Brown, convicted
of raping and murdering a 15-year-old Riverside girl in 1980.On Monday night,
the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco told Fogel to
reconsider a stay of execution and compare the new procedures to the state's
former practices.
An appeals court
Monday night ordered a federal judge to reconsider his refusal to block the
execution of condemned murderer Albert Greenwood Brown and said the state's rush
to put him to death appeared to be influenced by the availability of one of the
drugs used for lethal injection. Though Fogel said he lacked the time to
inquire into whether new state procedures for lethal injections, contained
adequate safeguards against a botched and agonizing death.
The three-judge
panel said it appeared that the execution date was chosen in part because the
state's supply of one of the lethal drugs has an expiration date of Friday.
Earlier Monday, Brown won a brief stay of execution from the state while his lawyers took their case against California's new lethal injection procedures to state and federal courts. Hours after a Marin County judge refused to prohibit the state from putting Brown to death, prison officials announced a 45-hour postponement of the execution, which had been scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.
Brown is now scheduled to die at 9 p.m. Thursday at San Quentin State Prison. Gov. The execution, if it proceeds, will be the state's first in nearly five years and apparently the last until next year.
