Court Offers Condemned a Final Option

California’s gas chamber, idled for nearly four years after a judge declared it inhumane, could be back in operation as early as next month after an appellate court ruling that death row inmates can choose between gas or lethal injection, state officials said Tuesday.

The ruling, by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, did not come in time to affect the scheduled execution of a condemned Orange County killer next week, but it should mean that another inmate, Bill Bradford, will be allowed to choose his method of execution on Aug. 18, officials said.

“At the moment, it appears he will have a choice, unless the courts decide otherwise before then,” said Lt. Joy Macfarlane, a spokeswoman at San Quentin State Prison.

At San Quentin, home to almost all of the state’s 509 condemned inmates and the only place in California where executions are carried out, “the gas chamber is still in place, and it can be ready for use in about 35 minutes,” said Macfarlane.

California’s last execution by cyanide gas came in September 1993. David Edwin Mason, convicted in the killings of four elderly people in Oakland 13 years earlier, gasped for breath desperately, his body convulsing, and was declared dead 14 minutes after the gas began filling the chamber.

The next year, in a ruling that triggered controversy on both legal and political fronts, a federal judge ruled that California’s gas chamber violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment because it imposed undue pain, similar to strangulation or drowning, on the inmate.

It was the first time a federal judge had barred a method of execution anywhere.

But the Legislature in 1996 enacted a law specifying that execution should take place by lethal injection unless a condemned prisoner chooses poison gas instead. In its 2-1 ruling Monday, the appellate court effectively upheld that choice in overruling the earlier gas-chamber ban.

The appellate court originally had upheld the gas-chamber ban in a 1996 ruling, but it reversed course in its decision this week because the Supreme Court ordered it to review that ruling in light of the state law.

The appellate court did not address the merits of the emotional gas-chamber issue, but ruled instead on largely procedural grounds, finding that the two inmates who brought suit over the issue did not have legal standing to challenge the gas chamber because they have not chosen it as their method of execution. A third plaintiff, Robert Alton Harris, was executed in 1992.

The dissenting justice, Judge Harry Pregerson, termed the reasoning “a cruel hoax.”

Officials at the state Department of Corrections and the attorney general’s office said they were reviewing the ruling Tuesday to determine its immediate impact.

Under the court’s ruling, lethal injection would become the “default” method for execution, meaning it would be used unless an inmate expressly indicated he wanted to die in the gas chamber, said Karl Mayer, a deputy attorney general who handles death row issues.

That is the reverse of the system that was in place before the 1994 court decision, when gas was the presumed method unless an inmate opted for lethal injection.

Whichever method an inmate chooses, the execution would be carried out at the chamber at San Quentin, with minimal physical adjustments needed in the facility, officials said.

“The chamber is maintained constantly in perfect condition. There’s not a problem with taking the warship out of the mothballs,” Mayer said.

Jack Leavitt, the defense attorney for Bradford, the inmate set for execution next month, could not be reached for comment Tuesday, and prison officials said they did not know if he has indicated how he would want to be put to death.

Bradford, 52, was convicted 10 years ago of murdering two women in Southern California. He is in the unusual position of having requested to die. A judge last month agreed to Bradford’s request to be put to death because the inmate said he wanted to avoid a years-long wait in prison while his case wound its way through the courts on appeal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.