A new roadblock has halted executions in California for at least another year.
Marin Superior Court Judge Faye D’Opal ordered state officials back to square one in creating a new lethal-injection protocol.
The state’s 2010 re-designed execution protocol was an attempt to satisfy U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel’s finding that the three-drug execution method amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Fogel suggested that executions should be done with a single drug in order to avoid the unconstitutional dilemma that has held up executions for nearly six years.
“I don’t think it is working. It’s not effective. We know that,” said state Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
California voters may have the final say in whether the death penalty is worth its legal and financial difficulties.
Opponents to the death penalty have gathered nearly $1.2 million for a 2012 ballot measure that would replace capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“I’ve killed four people for the state of California, and it didn’t make anything better for anyone,” said one of the measure’s supporters, Jeanne Woodford, executive director of Death Penalty Focus. She is a former San Quentin warden and once headed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
