California: State's Death Penalty Gets New Judge

San Quentin's new
death chamber

A long-running challenge to California's death penalty procedures that has resulted in executions being put on hold for 5 years has been assigned to a new federal judge in San Francisco.

The reassignment to U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg was announced this morning by the Northern California federal court's executive committee.

The 2006 lawsuit by several death row inmates was handled by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose for 5 years, but Fogel has taken a long-term leave from the court to head the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit claims the state's 3-drug lethal injection procedure could cause extreme pain, in violation of the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

A 2006 ruling by Fogel, who found that the procedure then in effect had numerous flaws, has resulted in a moratorium in executions at San Quentin State Prison.

State corrections officials have now revised the procedure and the revamped protocol is expected to undergo court scrutiny within the next few months.

There are more than 700 inmates on the state's death row, with cases in various stages of appeal.

Seeborg, who formerly worked as a federal prosecutor in San Jose, as a private lawyer and as a federal magistrate, was appointed as a trial judge by President Obama in 2009. His courtroom is in the San Francisco branch of the federal court.

Source: Bay City News, September 2, 2011

Execution moratorium transferred to new judge

A lawsuit that has led to a 5 1/2-year halt on executions in California was reassigned to a federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday because the San Jose judge whose ruling led to the moratorium is going on leave.

The federal courts' executive committee for coastal Northern California transferred the case to U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg, who joined the court in 2009.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who has presided over the case since it was filed in 2006, was appointed in July as the chief executive of the Federal Judicial Center, the research arm of the U.S. courts. He will leave next month for a stint of between 4 and 7 years in Washington but will keep his judicial status and can return to the bench when he leaves the center.

Fogel issued a stay of execution in February 2006 to Michael Morales, convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi (San Joaquin County).

Morales' lawsuit claimed the state's procedures for lethal injection, its method of execution since 1996, were defective and unreliable. After hearing testimony from researchers, prison guards and execution witnesses, Fogel ruled in December 2006 that a lack of staff training, planning and supervision had created an undue risk of anesthetic failure and a prolonged, agonizing death.

Prison officials have revised their procedures several times since then but have been slowed by regulatory review and state court hearings. Lawyers for the state and Death Row inmates have told Fogel they won't be ready for new hearings on the changed procedures until early next year.

Seeborg, a former federal prosecutor, spent eight years as a court-appointed federal magistrate in San Jose before President Obama appointed him to a judgeship in 2009. Last year, he upheld San Francisco's instant-runoff voting system, which decides citywide races in a single ballot after voters rank their top 3 candidates.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, September 2, 2011