So Anxious to Kick-Start Executions the Terminator Tries to Ignore Rule of Law

California officials charged into court this week to request that executions resume as early as September, knowing full well that the state of California has a time-out on executions, put in place in 2006, when Federal District Judge Jeremy Fogel stayed the execution of Michael Morales based upon Mr. Morales’ arguments against lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment (inmates may suffer inhumane deaths from the state's three-drug cocktail of lethal drugs). This is not the first time Gov. Schwarzenegger tried to circumvent the law in an effort to terminate people.

A task force named by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rewrote the execution procedures behind closed doors in 2007. But they were deemed illegal by Marin County Superior Court Judge Lynn O'Malley Taylor because they had been adopted without public input. It was Taylor's injunction that Adams ruled was still in force.

The very next day, a state court judge issued an order stating that executions remain on hold, in order to carry out the independent, judicial review of the execution process to ensure that California’s plan for carrying out executions conforms to state law and the Constitution.

But that didn't stop the Gov. and Attorney General Jerry Brown from telling the press that they intend to prepare for an execution anyway. Regardless of the federal and state judge ruling, the State of California started issuing death warrants. Albert Greenwood Brown was the first Death Row inmate to get a death warrant. The State scheduled his execution for September 29, 2010. They also said that they would ask for another execution date for the death row inmate, Michael Morales, knowing that the federal court order halting his execution remains in place.

Why so blood-thirsty? 

I realize many of the men on death row are guilty of heinous crimes.  However, at the same time, the state (we, the people), so impatient to start killing again, is equally, if not more guilty of heinous crimes, as we eagerly pursue what we seek to condemn, the deliberate taking of human life. The innocence or guilt of the condemned individual matters little. The wealth of the individual matters most.

Capital punishment is a form of human sacrifice when you consider that only a select, mostly indigenous few, are chosen to die in a ritual of power, where the state/privileged class demonstrates its ultimate authority as they decide who shall live and who shall die. 

Tell Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown that if they can’t follow the law, they can’t execute people.