USA - California. No executions in California in 2011

No executions in California in 2011. There will be no executions scheduled in California in 2011, according to lawyers for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. At a hearing last week in the court room of Federal District Judge Jeremy Fogel, lawyers defending the state’s lethal injection process from allegations that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment said that executions would not be feasible until 2012. The reason? There’s a new warden at San Quentin State Prison and per state regulations, he’s assembling his own lethal injection team. That execution team will be chosen by late August and attorneys for the condemned prisoners won’t get documentation of their qualifications until December, lawyers for the state’s attorney general told a federal judge Friday. Learning this, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who is overseeing constitutional challenges to California’s lethal-injection procedure, delayed hearing final arguments from attorneys until January.