SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – California has long been what one expert calls a “symbolic death penalty state,” one of 12 that has capital punishment on the books but has not executed anyone in more than a decade.
Prodded by voters and lawsuits, the nation’s most populous state may now be easing back toward allowing executions, though observers are split on how quickly they will resume, if at all.
Corrections officials expect to meet a Wednesday deadline to submit revised lethal injection rules to state regulators, trying again with technical changes after the first attempt was rejected in December.
The California Supreme Court, meanwhile, is expected to rule by August on challenges to a ballot initiative narrowly approved by voters in November that would speed up executions by reducing the time allowed for appeals.
Still, it is a far cry from the situation in Arkansas, which carried out its first execution since 2005 last week after trying to put eight inmates to death this month in an unprecedented series of double executions. Courts have blocked three of them. Legal rulings have put at least one other in doubt.