California Appeals Court Says Lethal Injection Rules Are Illegal

Yesterday afternoon the California Court of Appeal held that our prison system has, once again, completely failed to comply with state law when it adopted a problematic procedure for carrying out lethal injection executions.

Given that there is now no legal protocol for lethal injection executions, no known legal source for the drugs, and that manufacturers worldwide are increasingly reluctant to make them available, it's hard to imagine how California will ever again be able to carry out another execution without continuing to flout the law. Advocates immediately sprang into action to petition Governor Brown to end the death penalty charade in California calling the policy a "colossal waste of time and money" that is broken beyond repair.

Yesterday's decision should not come as a surprise – the government admitted that it had violated the law in numerous ways, and the lower-court judge had already struck-down the regulation. But it is an important one because it confirms both that the people of this state have a right to be heard when the government is making decisions and also that the government, like the rest of us, must follow the law.

For most of a decade, multiple judges on both state and federal courts have repeatedly held that California's execution procedures are fundamentally flawed and in violation of both state and federal law. One would think that these multiple rulings would prompt the government to reevaluate its entire approach to its execution procedure; but, instead, its approach has been to tinker around the edges, ignore the fundamental problems, and then try to convince the courts that they have solved all the problems. Not surprisingly, the courts have not been impressed. Yesterday's opinion is just the latest example.

Michael T. Risher is a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.