Court-ordered anesthesiologists refuse to participate in the process, citing ethical concerns.
By Louis Sahagun and Tim Reiterman, Times Staff Writers
SAN QUENTIN -- After a dramatic delay this morning, prison officials assembled a new team that is preparing an alternate plan to execute murderer Michael Morales, now scheduled for 7:30 this evening.
The three-person team will not include anesthesiologists like the two whose eleventh-hour refusal to participate early this morning led to the 20-hour postponement of the execution.
Morales seemed unfazed by the developments, prison officials reported.
Warden Steven Ornoski announced that the prison intends to carry out the execution with an unprecedented single dose of sodium pentothal, a lethal barbiturate, rather than the standard three-chemical potion.
Injecting Morales with five grams of barbiturates was expected to lengthen the execution from the usual 11 minutes to as long as 45 minutes.
A week ago, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel responded to defense claims that lethal injection violated a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment by offering three options: A lethal injection of only barbiturates; having an anesthesiologist on hand to ensure Morales was unconscious when the standard three-chemical injection was administered; or a stay of the execution pending a hearing.
State corrections officials chose the second option, and had two doctors ready to proceed with the execution as planned at 12:01 this morning.
After serious differences of opinion with the anesthesiologists, Ornoski asked his staff to stand down on the execution at about 2 a.m.
The doctors' withdrawal came at the end of hasty legal maneuvering in U.S. District Court, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. But it was the language in an opinion rendered Monday by the appellate court that had the court-ordered anesthesiologists in mutiny.
The doctors' concerns hinged on the ethics of returning an inmate to consciousness in the event of a botched lethal injection.
Doctors said the ruling raised serious questions about the possibility of having to intervene in the execution "if any evidence of either pain or a return to consciousness arose."
In a statement to the warden, the doctors said, "Any such intervention would be medically unethical. As a result, we have withdrawn from participation in this current process.... What is being asked of us is ethically unacceptable."
The death warrant for Morales expires at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. If the execution is not carried out by then, a Superior Court judge would have no more than 60 days to set another execution date.
Morales was returned to his cell on death row.
The family members of the victim were leaving San Quentin and "trying to gather themselves," prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon said.
The anticipated execution at San Quentin State Prison followed a last-minute clemency campaign fraught with controversy and highly unusual legal twists and turns.
Morales, 46, was convicted of the brutal 1981 slaying of Terri Winchell, a 17-year-old Lodi high school senior. He admitted conspiring with his cousin, Rick Ortega, to kill Winchell as payback for her dating Ortega's bisexual lover. But he said he accepted responsibility for the crime and was deeply remorseful.
Morales was set to become the 14th man and the first Latino executed by the state of California since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978.
He also was to be the third inmate executed in California in 10 weeks, and the fifth to whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied clemency since he took office two years ago.
Morales' defense team had argued that the state's three-stage lethal injection protocol violated a constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment," claiming that the initial rounds of sedatives and paralytic agents might mask, rather than prevent, pain from the final heart-stopping chemicals.
After studying the medical logs of executed inmates, Fogel agreed that the procedure was prone to error and recommended having a doctor present to make sure Morales was rendered unconscious before the final dose. His ruling applies only to the Morales execution.
Defense attorneys asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the execution on the grounds that Fogel's remedy was untested and had not been subjected to legal, medical or administrative reviews. The altered procedure was also protested by physician groups, including the American Medical Assn., on the grounds that it contradicted a doctor's Hippocratic oath to prevent harm.
Crittendon cited Fogel's ruling as the reason for the delay in the execution: "The protocol is relatively new in that this court decision just came down," he said.
Morales' petitions to block the execution were rejected by the appeals court over the weekend and by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. An unusual second request for clemency, filed just 12 hours before the scheduled execution, was also rejected by the governor.
In the clemency bids rejected by the appeals court, the California Supreme Court and Schwarzenegger, defense lawyers Senior and former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr argued that the decision to execute Morales was based on false testimony from a jailhouse informant.
Morales' trial judge, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath, came to agree and announced late last month that had he known that the informant — a star witness for the prosecution — had lied, he would not have supported a capital murder charge or sentenced Morales to death in 1983.
Legal experts said it was the first time since California reinstated capital punishment that a judge had asked a governor to commute the judge's own sentence of death to one of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In his second petition to Schwarzenegger, Starr made a point of saying that there was no record of a governor disregarding a sentencing judge's recommendation for clemency.
The informant, Bruce Samuelson, testified during the trial that Morales had confessed to him in Spanish that he had plotted to kill Winchell. A decade later, however, an investigation by the state attorney general's office showed that Morales, a fourth-generation Californian, didn't speak Spanish.
The problems with Samuelson's testimony created a rallying cry among advocates led by Starr, a constitutional law scholar and dean of the Pepperdine Law School.
Starr was also impressed that Morales had become what Starr described as "a deeply repentant sorrowful Christian who has accepted full responsibility for a terrible crime that will haunt him forever."
But the defense team's clemency campaign was complicated by the recent withdrawal of allegedly forged declarations from jurors urging clemency, in part because of the discrepancy in Samuelson's testimony. The disputed documents were generated by a defense investigator who was recently pulled off the case.
Prosecutors then submitted affidavits from five unnamed jurors indicating that their unanimous decision to convict Morales had little to do with Samuelson's testimony.
Officials designated 50 witnesses. Among them were five family members, including the victim's brother, Brian Chalk, 34, and 17 media representatives. Morales named two witnesses, but they were not identified, said Elaine Jennings, acting press secretary for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The slaying of Terri Winchell on Jan. 8, 1981, was brutal.
The attack began in Ortega's car when Morales, then 21, tried to strangle Winchell from behind with a belt, which broke. Morales' roommate, Patricia Felix, later testified that he earlier had rehearsed the strangulation by wrapping his belt around her neck.
A state attorney general's report said, "She screamed for Ortega to help and attempted to fight off the attack, ripping her own hair out of her scalp in the struggle."
Morales then beat Winchell on the head with a claw hammer until her face was no longer recognizable. Then he dragged her face-down across a road and into a vineyard, where he raped her.
Morales then stabbed her four times in the heart. Later that night, he spent $11 he found in her purse on beer, wine and cigarettes.
Two days later, Morales was arrested at his home, where police found evidence, including his broken belt stained with Winchell's blood, hidden under a mattress. They also found the blood-stained hammer in his refrigerator vegetable crisper, and Winchell's purse and credit card.
In 1983, Morales was found guilty of murder with special circumstances of lying in wait, planning a murder in advance and murder by torture.
Over the years, Morales' attorneys claimed that he was high on PCP the night of the killing and that his cousin, who was sentenced to life in prison, masterminded the slaying of the straight-A student who had sung in a church choir, played classical piano and was working part time at a restaurant to raise money for college.
San Joaquin County Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Schultz dismissed those claims, pointing out that the lying-in-wait charge against Morales was corroborated by two witnesses.
By Louis Sahagun and Tim Reiterman, Times Staff Writers
SAN QUENTIN -- After a dramatic delay this morning, prison officials assembled a new team that is preparing an alternate plan to execute murderer Michael Morales, now scheduled for 7:30 this evening.
The three-person team will not include anesthesiologists like the two whose eleventh-hour refusal to participate early this morning led to the 20-hour postponement of the execution.
Morales seemed unfazed by the developments, prison officials reported.
Warden Steven Ornoski announced that the prison intends to carry out the execution with an unprecedented single dose of sodium pentothal, a lethal barbiturate, rather than the standard three-chemical potion.
Injecting Morales with five grams of barbiturates was expected to lengthen the execution from the usual 11 minutes to as long as 45 minutes.
A week ago, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel responded to defense claims that lethal injection violated a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment by offering three options: A lethal injection of only barbiturates; having an anesthesiologist on hand to ensure Morales was unconscious when the standard three-chemical injection was administered; or a stay of the execution pending a hearing.
State corrections officials chose the second option, and had two doctors ready to proceed with the execution as planned at 12:01 this morning.
After serious differences of opinion with the anesthesiologists, Ornoski asked his staff to stand down on the execution at about 2 a.m.
The doctors' withdrawal came at the end of hasty legal maneuvering in U.S. District Court, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. But it was the language in an opinion rendered Monday by the appellate court that had the court-ordered anesthesiologists in mutiny.
The doctors' concerns hinged on the ethics of returning an inmate to consciousness in the event of a botched lethal injection.
Doctors said the ruling raised serious questions about the possibility of having to intervene in the execution "if any evidence of either pain or a return to consciousness arose."
In a statement to the warden, the doctors said, "Any such intervention would be medically unethical. As a result, we have withdrawn from participation in this current process.... What is being asked of us is ethically unacceptable."
The death warrant for Morales expires at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. If the execution is not carried out by then, a Superior Court judge would have no more than 60 days to set another execution date.
Morales was returned to his cell on death row.
The family members of the victim were leaving San Quentin and "trying to gather themselves," prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon said.
The anticipated execution at San Quentin State Prison followed a last-minute clemency campaign fraught with controversy and highly unusual legal twists and turns.
Morales, 46, was convicted of the brutal 1981 slaying of Terri Winchell, a 17-year-old Lodi high school senior. He admitted conspiring with his cousin, Rick Ortega, to kill Winchell as payback for her dating Ortega's bisexual lover. But he said he accepted responsibility for the crime and was deeply remorseful.
Morales was set to become the 14th man and the first Latino executed by the state of California since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978.
He also was to be the third inmate executed in California in 10 weeks, and the fifth to whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied clemency since he took office two years ago.
Morales' defense team had argued that the state's three-stage lethal injection protocol violated a constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment," claiming that the initial rounds of sedatives and paralytic agents might mask, rather than prevent, pain from the final heart-stopping chemicals.
After studying the medical logs of executed inmates, Fogel agreed that the procedure was prone to error and recommended having a doctor present to make sure Morales was rendered unconscious before the final dose. His ruling applies only to the Morales execution.
Defense attorneys asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the execution on the grounds that Fogel's remedy was untested and had not been subjected to legal, medical or administrative reviews. The altered procedure was also protested by physician groups, including the American Medical Assn., on the grounds that it contradicted a doctor's Hippocratic oath to prevent harm.
Crittendon cited Fogel's ruling as the reason for the delay in the execution: "The protocol is relatively new in that this court decision just came down," he said.
Morales' petitions to block the execution were rejected by the appeals court over the weekend and by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. An unusual second request for clemency, filed just 12 hours before the scheduled execution, was also rejected by the governor.
In the clemency bids rejected by the appeals court, the California Supreme Court and Schwarzenegger, defense lawyers Senior and former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr argued that the decision to execute Morales was based on false testimony from a jailhouse informant.
Morales' trial judge, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath, came to agree and announced late last month that had he known that the informant — a star witness for the prosecution — had lied, he would not have supported a capital murder charge or sentenced Morales to death in 1983.
Legal experts said it was the first time since California reinstated capital punishment that a judge had asked a governor to commute the judge's own sentence of death to one of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In his second petition to Schwarzenegger, Starr made a point of saying that there was no record of a governor disregarding a sentencing judge's recommendation for clemency.
The informant, Bruce Samuelson, testified during the trial that Morales had confessed to him in Spanish that he had plotted to kill Winchell. A decade later, however, an investigation by the state attorney general's office showed that Morales, a fourth-generation Californian, didn't speak Spanish.
The problems with Samuelson's testimony created a rallying cry among advocates led by Starr, a constitutional law scholar and dean of the Pepperdine Law School.
Starr was also impressed that Morales had become what Starr described as "a deeply repentant sorrowful Christian who has accepted full responsibility for a terrible crime that will haunt him forever."
But the defense team's clemency campaign was complicated by the recent withdrawal of allegedly forged declarations from jurors urging clemency, in part because of the discrepancy in Samuelson's testimony. The disputed documents were generated by a defense investigator who was recently pulled off the case.
Prosecutors then submitted affidavits from five unnamed jurors indicating that their unanimous decision to convict Morales had little to do with Samuelson's testimony.
Officials designated 50 witnesses. Among them were five family members, including the victim's brother, Brian Chalk, 34, and 17 media representatives. Morales named two witnesses, but they were not identified, said Elaine Jennings, acting press secretary for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The slaying of Terri Winchell on Jan. 8, 1981, was brutal.
The attack began in Ortega's car when Morales, then 21, tried to strangle Winchell from behind with a belt, which broke. Morales' roommate, Patricia Felix, later testified that he earlier had rehearsed the strangulation by wrapping his belt around her neck.
A state attorney general's report said, "She screamed for Ortega to help and attempted to fight off the attack, ripping her own hair out of her scalp in the struggle."
Morales then beat Winchell on the head with a claw hammer until her face was no longer recognizable. Then he dragged her face-down across a road and into a vineyard, where he raped her.
Morales then stabbed her four times in the heart. Later that night, he spent $11 he found in her purse on beer, wine and cigarettes.
Two days later, Morales was arrested at his home, where police found evidence, including his broken belt stained with Winchell's blood, hidden under a mattress. They also found the blood-stained hammer in his refrigerator vegetable crisper, and Winchell's purse and credit card.
In 1983, Morales was found guilty of murder with special circumstances of lying in wait, planning a murder in advance and murder by torture.
Over the years, Morales' attorneys claimed that he was high on PCP the night of the killing and that his cousin, who was sentenced to life in prison, masterminded the slaying of the straight-A student who had sung in a church choir, played classical piano and was working part time at a restaurant to raise money for college.
San Joaquin County Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Schultz dismissed those claims, pointing out that the lying-in-wait charge against Morales was corroborated by two witnesses.
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