California

From the Sacramento Bee: Governor rejects Morales clemency

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused Friday to grant clemency to Michael A. Morales, saying the condemned killer’s claim of remorse doesn’t outweigh the brutality of his murder of Terri Lynn Winchell.

“Nothing in the record or the materials before me compels a grant of clemency,” Schwarzenegger said in his a statement of decision. “The pain Ms. Winchell’s loved ones have been forced to endure at the hands of Morales is unfathomable as is the brutality of the acts he perpetrated.”

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Judge Fogel will determine later today whether California Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s proposition for anesthesiologist support in the Morales execution is acceptable. Yesterday, the judge ruled that it was possible that poor Morales might have to feel pain and the State had to make sure he didn’t.

Lockyer, an otherwise fiscally and politically inept media-whore politician, happens to be on the right side of this issue. He plans to have two anesthesiologists available for the execution.

Excerpt from Fox News:

California to Use Anesthesiologist to Make Sure Execution is Painless

California’s attorney general told a judge Wednesday that the state would employ an anesthesiologist to make sure a death row inmate suffers no extreme pain during execution.

To comply with Tuesday’s order by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, the anesthesiologist must determine that Michael Morales is unconscious after he’s given a sedative. Only then, under the judge’s order, can a paralyzing agent and finally a heart-stopping drug be administered.

Right: California Attorney General William Lockyear.

A spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer said having the anesthesiologist present during next week’s scheduled execution is “one of the best options available.”

[ . . . ]

Also Wednesday, Morales lost another legal round to stay alive when the California Supreme Court dismissed one of his two remaining legal challenges. Without elaboration, the justices said the argument based on disputed trial testimony lacked merit.

This last issue will probably go to the Supreme Court of the US, where I doubt that it will be heard, since the testimony in question was ruled “without merit” on several occasions. Why do they keep wasting the high court’s time with this crap?

Regarding the last post, the judge did not rule out the death penalty for Michael Morales, but only to alter the procedure. From the Sacramento Bee:

Killer’s death may be halted

Judge says state must change lethal injection procedure or postpone Morales’ execution.

[U.S. District Judge Jeremy] Fogel noted in his ruling that no court has found lethal injection to be an unconstitutional form of punishment, and he said he’s not about to do so. The issue, he said, is assuring the procedure is carried out in a constitutional manner.

State officials need to chant, bark at the moon, burn incense or whatever the judge says in order to just stick the needle in Morales and get on with it!

From the Sacramento Bee:

California Case against execution trimmed

Morales’ lawyers concede doubts about juror declarations

Attorneys seeking clemency for condemned murderer Michael A. Morales have withdrawn from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s consideration six declarations in which jurors expressed reservations about the death penalty verdict they rendered 23 years ago.

Prosecutors charged last week that five of the declarations Morales’ attorneys filed under seal were fabrications, and the killer’s lawyers conceded in a letter Sunday to Schwarzenegger’s legal affairs secretary that there are “substantial issues” surrounding the statements.

The declarations were obtained for Morales’ legal team by a private investigator that the state attorney general’s office identified as Kathleen Culhane of San Francisco. Culhane could not be reached for comment Monday.

“This is a first in capital litigation and clemency proceedings that we are aware of,” attorney general’s spokesman Nathan Barankin said of the withdrawal of the declarations. “And it is probably one of the most serious breaches of attorney obligations one can imagine.”

Besides the clemency petition, five more exhibits obtained by Culhane were included in an appeal challenging evidentiary issues in the case that defense lawyers filed Friday with the California Supreme Court. Those exhibits also are being withdrawn.

[ . . . ]

Morales is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection next Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. He currently has a petition pending in U.S. District Court in San Jose challenging lethal injection as being a cruel and unusual form of punishment. A federal judge is expected to rule on that petition today.

Cruel and unusual? Ask the family of the victim in this case whether she was cruelly raped and murdered. Just carry out the sentence on this asshole. And, while we’re at it, bring charges against the attorneys for presenting false testimony.