Californians are examining return to death penalty
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — California has long been what one expert calls a “symbolic death penalty state,” one of 12 that has capital punishment on the books but has not executed anyone in more than a decade.
Prodded by voters and lawsuits, the nation’s most populous state may now be easing back toward allowing executions, though observers are split on how quickly they will resume, if at all.
Corrections officials expect to meet a Wednesday deadline to submit revised lethal injection rules to state regulators, trying again with technical changes after the first attempt was rejected in December.
The California Supreme Court, meanwhile, is expected to rule by August on challenges to a ballot initiative narrowly approved by voters in November that would speed up executions by reducing the time allowed for appeals.
Still, it is a far cry from the situation in Arkansas, which carried out its first execution since 2005 last week after trying to put eight inmates to death this month in an unprecedented series of double executions.
Courts have blocked three of them. Legal rulings have put at least one other in doubt.
California could come close to resuming executions in the next year, said law professor Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, though others say too many variables and challenges remain to make a prediction.
California has by far the nation’s largest death row with nearly 750 inmates, about double that of No. 2 Florida.
The state’s proposed lethal injection regulations are patterned after a single-drug process that already passed muster with the U.S. Supreme Court, Weisberg said.
Corrections officials submitted the regulations only after they were forced to act by a judge’s ruling on behalf of crime victims angered at the state’s three-year delay.
But the regulations replacing California’s old three-drug method are likely to be approved at some point, Weisberg said.
Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University School of Law and an expert on lethal injections, was among those who said recent revisions to the state’s proposed regulations still don’t cure underlying problems that can lead to botched executions.
RICHMOND, VA.
Police: Officer shoots knife-wielding man in Virginia
Police say an officer in Virginia shot a knife-wielding man who had earlier told dispatchers that he strangled his wife. The Richmond Police Department says officers were called to an apartment complex early Sunday after a man told a dispatcher that he strangled his wife and was holding a gun to his head.
Police say officers found the man at the front door of the residence and an officer used a stun gun, which police say “proved ineffective.” Police say the man then threatened the officers with a knife and an officer shot the man once. Police say the man was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
POMONA, CALIF.
Hundreds remember teacher killed in classroom
Family, friends and the public packed a California church for the funeral of a teacher who was shot and killed along with a student in her elementary school classroom in San Bernardino. Hundreds remembered Karen Elaine Smith on Saturday as devoted to her students, her family and her church.
Los Angeles news station KABCTV reports that Smith’s brother played the saxophone and one of her sons played the guitar during the four-hour service in Pomona.
The 53-year-old teacher and 8-year-old Jonathan Martinez were killed April 10 when Smith’s estranged husband walked into the classroom and opened fire.