A federal judge in San Jose Saturday evening extended until noon Sunday the deadline for a condemned inmate to choose between being executed with one drug or three drugs on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel had previously ordered Albert Greenwood Brown to make the choice by 6 p.m. Saturday.
He extended the deadline after Brown’s attorneys said they didn’t have enough time to evaluate new details about the one drug procedure that were filed in mid-afternoon by state attorneys.
Brown, 56, is due to be executed by lethal injection for the 1980 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Riverside.
If the execution occurs, it will be the first in California in nearly five years.
Brown claims that the three-drug execution procedure has the potential to cause unconstitutional extreme pain.
On Friday, Fogel said the execution could proceed on the condition that the state gave Brown the choice of being executed with a single drug, sodium thiopental, instead of three.
Brown’s attorneys said in a filing late today that both procedures have a risk of being carried out improperly and that forcing Brown to choose between them is “constitutionally medieval.”
Brown’s lawyers also plan to ask a Marin County Superior Court judge Monday morning to block the execution in connection with a separate lawsuit.
The Superior Court lawsuit claims the state’s adoption of the lethal injection protocol violated a California law’s requirements for public review of new regulations.
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
