New execution protocol proposed

The state, in papers submitted in response to a court challenge to lethal injection, said officials would stick to the three-drug protocol that has been blamed for excruciatingly painful deaths of inmates nationwide. But officials said they would adjust the doses and train prison staff to ensure that inmates are thoroughly unconscious before the final painful drugs are given.

The state also plans to complete construction of a larger, better-lighted death chamber designed specifically for lethal injection executions, unlike the old facility, which was built in 1937 as the state's gas chamber.

On Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea L. Hoch, and James Tilton, director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the new protocol addressed all the issues U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel raised in finding that the state's previous procedures violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

And Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying, "I am committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure that the lethal injection process is constitutional so the will of the people is upheld."

But lawyers for Michael Morales, the condemned killer whose challenge to lethal injection led to Fogel's ruling, made it clear they will challenge the new protocol in court.

"The protocol still fails to conform to the standards for euthanasia of animals established by the American Veterinary Medical Assn. and does not meaningfully address the problems described by Judge Fogel" in his decision, said Washington, D.C., attorney Ginger Anders, one of Morales' lawyers.

Morales has been on death row for a quarter of a century for the 1981 murder of Lodi teenager Terri Winchell. Fogel halted his execution 15 months ago, hours before he was to die, because of the inmate's challenge. Executions have been on hold since then, while Fogel conducted a lengthy investigation into lethal injection procedures.