Jeanne Woodford started at San Quentin State Prison as a correctional officer in 1978, weeks after graduating from college. She rose through the ranks, eventually becoming warden of the prison, and director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She returned to the Bay Area in 2006 to work as Chief of Adult Probation in San Francisco, and says she left the public sector because she was tired of managing shrinking budgets and ready to work on reforming the system. Earlier this year, Woodford became the Executive Director of Death Penalty Focus, an organization dedicated to ending capital punishment. I sat down with Woodford recently to talk about the move.
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Arizona’s execution drugs declared “illegal;” inmate executed with new drug
Yesterday, the US Department of Justice intervened to effectively stop an execution scheduled hours later in Arizona. The DOJ informed the state of Arizona that it could not use one of the three drugs used in the state’s lethal injection protocol because the drug had been obtained illegally from a foreign source. Arizona, along with several other states, imported supplies of sodium thiopental–an anesthetic used to put inmates to sleep in advance of their death–from a company in the United Kingdom. The DOJ has not yet given specifics on why exactly it believes Arizona acted improperly when it imported the drugs, but the Drug Enforcement Agency had already seized the supplies of five out of ten states that imported sodium thiopental.
No executions in California in 2011
Michael Angelo Morales is among the inmates on death row who are eligible for execution.
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. According to the Stockton Record:
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.
Brown calls off death row expansion
CDCR
San Quentin State Prison, home of California's male death row
Governor Jerry Brown today announced he’s stopping a controversial death row expansion project. Marin legislators Assemblyman Jared Huffman and Senator Mark Leno have both been long opposed to the project, which has been scheduled to go ahead for some time. In a press release, Brown gave his reasoning:
“At a time when children, the disabled and seniors face painful cuts to essential programs, the State of California cannot justify a massive expenditure of public dollars for the worst criminals in our state,” said Brown. “California will have to find another way to address the housing needs of condemned inmates. It would be unconscionable to earmark $356 million for a new and improved death row while making severe cuts to education and programs that serve the most vulnerable among us.”
California’s death row, which houses 713 condemned inmates, is said to be overcrowded and run-down. Opponents of the expansion project have argued that death row inmates could be distributed to other prisons instead of expanding the San Quentin facility. San Quentin is also the site of the state’s lethal injection chamber and has traditionally housed condemned male inmates.
New lethal injection drug, new controversy
CDCR
More and more states are shifting to a new execution drug, pentobarbital, in the wake of an international controversy that essentially resulted in the end of sodium thiopental production by the American company, Hospira. Hospira had always been uncomfortable with its product’s use in the lethal injection process–sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, is also used by hospitals and clinics. After a raw material shortage slowed sodium thiopental production by Hospira in the United States, many states, including California, looked for the drug abroad, and ended up importing it from distributors in the United Kingdom. (Georgia’s supply has since been seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is investigating the transaction.) Hospira later announced that they’re leaving the sodium thiopental business altogether, in response to outrage in Europe over European-made drugs ending up in US executions. The announcement meant states started looking for alternatives–and now, a new execution drug has emerged.
Life behind the “Walls”: Texas’ lethal injection chamber
The "Walls Unit" is known for its tall, brick perimeter.
The Texas Tribune has a profile of Jim Willett, former warden of the Hunstville State Penitentiary (knows as the “Walls”), who “never hit anyone in his life,” but oversaw the state’s death chamber during its busiest period:
“Somebody was going to have to deal with those inmates,” Willett said. “And I felt like those inmates couldn’t have anybody better to deal with than me.”
He oversaw one of the busiest periods in Texas’ death chamber. During the three-year period he was warden, he gave the go-ahead for 89 executions. Willett greeted the condemned when they arrived at the Walls, talked with them about how the process would work, asked about their last statements and tried to fulfill their final requests.
Execution drugs: Georgia’s stock seized by DEA
CDCR
The Drug Enforcement Agency has seized Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental, the first of three drugs used in the state’s lethal injection process. According to the New York Times, the DEA action came about because of the origin of the drugs. Georgia, like many states (including California) recently obtained sodium thiopental, scarce in the United States, from companies in the UK, which have not been approved by the FDA to manufacture the drug:
Illinois abolishes the death penalty
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signs the bill.
Illinois abolished the death penalty today when Governor Pat Quinn (Dem) signed a law passed by the state legislature to repeal the punishment. Quinn gave his reasoning for not veto-ing the new law in an official statement:
“I have concluded that our system of imposing the death penalty is inherently flawed… As a state, we cannot tolerate the executions of innocent people because such actions strike at the very legitimacy of a government. Since 1977, Illinois has seen 20 people exonerated from death row. Seven of those were exonerated since the moratorium was imposed in 2000. That is a record that should trouble us all. To say that this is unacceptable does not even begin to express the profound regret and shame we, as a society, must bear for these failures of justice.
Since our experience has shown that there is no way to design a perfect death penalty system, free from the numerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictions or discriminatory treatment, I have concluded that the proper course of action is to abolish it. With our broken system, we cannot ensure justice is achieved in every case.”
Sixteen states have now abolished capital punishment since 1976, when the US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty does not violate the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Quinn also commuted the sentences of the 15 inmates on the state’s death row.