On June 10, California announced it would no longer try to defend its cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. In May, a court rul­ing inval­i­dat­ed the state’s three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col because state offi­cials failed to fol­low admin­is­tra­tive rules in adopt­ing the pro­to­col. Governor Jerry Brown and oth­er offi­cials will instead pro­ceed with devel­op­ing a sin­gle-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col sim­i­lar to those adopt­ed recent­ly in states like Ohio, Arizona, and Washington. California has the largest death row in the United States with more than 725 inmates. The state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2006 because of legal prob­lems with its three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. Executions are unlike­ly to resume imme­di­ate­ly since it could take a year or longer to approve the new sin­gle-drug pro­to­col. Even if the sin­gle-drug method is approved, the state could face the addi­tion­al chal­lenge of secur­ing sup­plies of the drugs because man­u­fac­tur­ers object to their use in lethal injections.

(H. Mintz, ​“California aban­dons defense of three-drug exe­cu­tions,” San Jose Mercury News, July 11, 2013). See Lethal Injection.

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