SACRAMENTO — The state will not be ready to defend its new lethal injection procedures in court until early next year, prolonging a moratorium on executions in California that has been in effect since January 2006. State lawyers told a federal judge that San Quentin’s new warden, Michael Martel, needs more time to select a new team of guards to carry out executions. Deficiencies in staff training and supervision were among the factors cited by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel when he ruled in 2006 that the state’s lethal injection methods posed an undue risk of a botched execution that would leave the prisoner conscious and in agony while dying.
Nearly two-thirds of the 16 states with active death chambers are switching to an alternative sedative for executions even as the drug’s manufacturer argues against its use in capital punishment and some European countries push export bans for such drugs. Ten states have now switched to pentobarbital or are considering a switch as part of their three-drug methods, according to a survey of all death penalty states by The Associated Press. Anti-death penalty groups want pentobarbital’s Danish manufacturer, Lundbeck Inc., to write clauses into contracts with pharmaceutical distributors to ban its use in executions.
