A Marin County Superior Court judge today refused to block Wednesday’s scheduled execution of a convicted murderer at San Quentin State Prison.
Judge Verna Adams said lawyers for Albert Greenwood Brown had not proved that he would suffer extreme pain if executed according to the state’s lethal injection protocol.
Brown, 56, is slated to put to death at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday for the 1980 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Riverside. If the execution takes place, it would be the first in California since January 2006.
In the case before Adams, Brown contended that the state’s adoption of a recently revised lethal injection protocol violated a California law on procedures for new regulations.
Sara Eisenberg, a lawyer for another condemned inmate, Mitchell Sims, said Brown and Sims will appeal immediately to the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco.
The Marin County case is one of two in which Brown is seeking a stay of the execution.
The other case is a federal court challenge based on the claim that the state’s lethal injection procedure is unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment because it has the potential to cause extreme pain.
A federal trial judge in San Jose refused to stay the execution in that case, but Brown’s lawyers have appealed that ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
