On Friday a federal judge cleared the way for California's first execution in nearly four years. The state plans to execute Riverside killer Alfred Brown by lethal injection next Wednesday. But the judge set certain conditions for California to execute the inmate.
In an 11-page ruling, US District Judge Jeremy Fogel wrote that he had no legal authority to prevent the execution of inmate Alfred Brown.
A jury convicted Brown for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Riverside County girl 30 years ago. A judge in that county recently scheduled Brown's execution for next Wednesday. But Judge Fogel wrote that the state may only execute Brown with a single barbiturate called sodium thiopental.
Fogel noted that in the last couple of years the states of Ohio and Washington "carried out a total of nine successful and problem-free executions" using the single-drug method.
But California's just adopted revised lethal injection protocols that use a 3-drug cocktail to execute inmates. The state did that to fix problems that had botched executions so badly that Judge Fogel halted them four years ago.
It's unclear whether California officials would be legally able to switch methods in time for the execution scheduled next week.
