Post by CSA FD on Apr 20, 2012 13:43:59 GMT -5
MURDER VICTIM’S FAMILY SUES TO ENFORCE CALIFORNIA DEATH PENALTY
The brother of Terri Winchell, who was brutally murdered in 1981, has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to end the delay in the execution of his sister’s murderer, Michael Morales.
Bradley Winchell is asking California’s Third District Court of Appeal to order the CDCR to exercise its authority under state law to adopt a one-drug lethal injection method currently used in the states of Ohio, Washington, and Arizona to end the six-year delay of Morales’s sentence.
The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which is representing Mr. Winchell, has filed a petition for a writ of mandate in the Sacramento appeals court arguing that the CDCR has been derelict in its duty to enforce the law. Former California Governors George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson have joined the petition as co-counsel for Mr. Winchell.
In its argument, CJLF notes that there are currently 14 murderers on California’s death row whose sentences have been fully reviewed and who are ready for execution, yet the execution of their sentences has been blocked by litigation over lethal injection. While other states have moved forward and resumed enforcement of their capital punishment laws, California remains mired in litigation.
“This delay and denial of justice is entirely unnecessary,” said the Foundation’s Legal Director Kent Scheidegger. “The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has ample authority to resume executions promptly. The failure of that Department and its Secretary, the Respondents in this action, is an abuse of discretion, an obstruction of the law, and a violation of the constitutional rights of the victims’ families,” he added.
Morales was sentenced to death in 1983 for the rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell. Between 1983 and 2005, Morales’s conviction and sentence were reviewed and upheld multiple times in both state and federal courts, and the United States Supreme Court twice refused to disturb those holdings.
The scheduled February 2006 execution was stayed by a federal judge considering Morales’s claim that California’s three-drug lethal injection process was unconstitutional. In 2007 a Marin County Superior Court judge, in an unprecedented ruling, announced that Morales’s execution could not proceed until the lethal injection protocol was adopted in compliance with state’s Administrative Procedure Act.
“At any point in this process, CDCR could have announced a one-drug protocol, encouraged by the federal judge who had been reviewing California’s three-drug protocol, and gone forward with the execution of Morales and several other murderers on death row,” said Scheidegger. “The purpose of the action we have initiated today is to secure a judgment ordering the state to stop sitting on its hands and do its job,” he added.”
www.cjlf.org/releases/12-07.htm#.T5GdGw9MRvg.facebook
The brother of Terri Winchell, who was brutally murdered in 1981, has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to end the delay in the execution of his sister’s murderer, Michael Morales.
Bradley Winchell is asking California’s Third District Court of Appeal to order the CDCR to exercise its authority under state law to adopt a one-drug lethal injection method currently used in the states of Ohio, Washington, and Arizona to end the six-year delay of Morales’s sentence.
The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which is representing Mr. Winchell, has filed a petition for a writ of mandate in the Sacramento appeals court arguing that the CDCR has been derelict in its duty to enforce the law. Former California Governors George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson have joined the petition as co-counsel for Mr. Winchell.
In its argument, CJLF notes that there are currently 14 murderers on California’s death row whose sentences have been fully reviewed and who are ready for execution, yet the execution of their sentences has been blocked by litigation over lethal injection. While other states have moved forward and resumed enforcement of their capital punishment laws, California remains mired in litigation.
“This delay and denial of justice is entirely unnecessary,” said the Foundation’s Legal Director Kent Scheidegger. “The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has ample authority to resume executions promptly. The failure of that Department and its Secretary, the Respondents in this action, is an abuse of discretion, an obstruction of the law, and a violation of the constitutional rights of the victims’ families,” he added.
Morales was sentenced to death in 1983 for the rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell. Between 1983 and 2005, Morales’s conviction and sentence were reviewed and upheld multiple times in both state and federal courts, and the United States Supreme Court twice refused to disturb those holdings.
The scheduled February 2006 execution was stayed by a federal judge considering Morales’s claim that California’s three-drug lethal injection process was unconstitutional. In 2007 a Marin County Superior Court judge, in an unprecedented ruling, announced that Morales’s execution could not proceed until the lethal injection protocol was adopted in compliance with state’s Administrative Procedure Act.
“At any point in this process, CDCR could have announced a one-drug protocol, encouraged by the federal judge who had been reviewing California’s three-drug protocol, and gone forward with the execution of Morales and several other murderers on death row,” said Scheidegger. “The purpose of the action we have initiated today is to secure a judgment ordering the state to stop sitting on its hands and do its job,” he added.”
www.cjlf.org/releases/12-07.htm#.T5GdGw9MRvg.facebook