California under new pressure to switch lethal injection method

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday giving a green light to an execution drug triggered a renewed attempt in California to create a single-drug method of lethal injection for inmates on America’s largest Death Row.

Under a legal settlement reached earlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration agreed to propose a new lethal injection method 120 days after the Supreme Court decided a challenge to a lethal injection drug used in Oklahoma.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said Monday’s ruling would make it more difficult for challengers to block California’s new protocol, which is due in late October.

Court rulings forced the state to revamp its executions plans, and more than three years have passed since Brown ordered prison officials to create a single-drug protocol.

Scheidegger and other death penalty supporters favor executing inmates with a lethal dose of pentobarbital, a drug that veterinarians use to euthanize animals.