California Officials Put Morales Execution on Hold

by Rebecca Doran / March 2006 issue of Socialist Action newspaper

The administration of the death penalty in California was placed temporarily on hold last month after San Quentin death-row prisoner Michael Angelo Morales received a stay of execution. The execution, which was to be carried out by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. on

Feb. 21, was halted when two anesthesiologists withdrew from the death-chamber.

It would have been California’s third execution in just over two months. An international movement to stop the Dec. 13 execution of Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stanley Tookie Williams failed to prevent the state from putting Williams to death. And Clarence Ray

Allen, a 76-year-old wheelchair-bound, blind Native American man, was executed in January.

California’s false reputation as a compassionate state was seriously blemished when the world movement to end the death penalty slammed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as the California courts, for denying Stan Tookie Williams clemency and a fair hearing of evidence that promised to prove him not guilty of the crimes that sent him to the execution chamber. It took a bumbling execution team nearly 35 minutes to kill Williams. To execute the 76-year-old Allen, executioners had to use two consecutive doses of the lethal injection.

These senseless acts of state-sponsored violence may prove costly to the ruling class. In late January, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed executions in both Florida and Missouri in order to hear persistent arguments on the constitutionality of lethal injection on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual punishment.

And on Feb. 1, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, Calif., ordered authorities to turn over heart-monitoring data taken during the executions of Williams, Allen, and another condemned California prisoner, Donald Beardslee. Beardslee, a severely brain-damaged man, was executed by lethal injection in January 2005.

Judge Fogel heard arguments that condemned inmates may feel high levels of pain, since the first drug used in the lethal cocktail, sodium thiopental, is not always effective in rendering the inmate unconscious. Another drug paralyzes her or him before the final drug, potassium chloride, ultimately stops the heart. It is argued that potassium chloride creates an agonizing burning sensation as it courses through the body to the heart, and the paralyzing drug, which is called pancuronium bromide, only masks the suffering of the condemned.

The hearing in Judge Fogel’s courtroom did not produce a stay of execution for Morales; however, it did end in a controversial decision by Judge Fogel to put two anesthesiologists in the death chamber to verify that Morales was unconscious during the lethal procedure.

Fogel gave the state another option, in which executioners would eliminate the two later chemicals and inject Morales with a lethal dose of sodium thiopental or a similar barbituate. It is unclear how long this process would take to kill Morales, however; some are predicting as long as 45 minutes. The state originally rejected this option.

Fogel’s decision sparked a national debate on the ethics of doctors involved in executions. Although it is common for doctors to participate in the course leading up to an execution (i.e., doctors training executioners and prison psychiatrists working immediately outside of the execution chamber), the placement of medical doctors inside the execution chamber sparked outrage in the medical community.

In an eerie decision, which was in light of the ethics controversy, the anesthesiologists planned to hide their identities from execution witnesses by wearing masks as they assisted in the death of Morales. However, just hours before the planned execution, procedural arguments arose between state officials and the two doctors, which led to a series of delays. At the last minute, the two doctors withdrew, and the 12:01 a.m. execution of Morales was put on hold until 7:30 p.m. Prison officials announced that they now planned to use the second option of executing Morales with a lethal dose of sedatives.

State officials spent the next several hours trying to attain willing medical professionals to take part in the execution. But two hours before the rescheduled execution, San Quentin announced it had been unsuccessful in its search. At midnight, Morales’ death warrant expired.

With Morales returned to death row from the death chamber, executions in California have been placed temporarily on hold. In early May an evidentiary hearing will be held in the courtroom of Judge Fogel to hear arguments on the constitutionality of California’s lethal-injection procedure. It is likely that this ground-breaking case will make its way back to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could further delay executions in California.

Although this is only a temporary stay of state-sponsored murder, it gives abolitionists a golden opportunity to keep in the spotlight the turning tide of public opinion. Regardless of future reactionary rulings by judges, the death penalty machine in California will struggle to run smoothly. A growing feeling of dissent and an awakening class consciousness among the working people and poor of the state will determine the future of California’s killing machine.