Lungren to Seek July Execution for Triple-Murderer Kelly

A day after triple-murderer Horace Kelly’s execution was blocked by a federal judge, Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren’s office said Thursday that it would not seek Kelly’s death Tuesday, as scheduled, but would aim for a July 7 execution.

Last month, in the first such trial in California since 1950, a Marin County jury found Kelly sane enough to be executed. But on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter stayed the execution to review defense claims of constitutional violations in the Marin trial, and in Kelly’s murder trials in San Bernardino and Riverside counties a decade ago.

Dane Gillette, a senior assistant attorney general, said Thursday that Lungren’s office was mainly concerned about Hatter’s ruling that he could consider a federal appeal based on Kelly’s original trials. Those appeals normally take years to resolve.

An appeal of the Marin County sanity trial, on the other hand, involves limited issues and should be decided quickly, Gillette said. He said Lungren’s office would concentrate on getting Hatter to resolve sanity-related issues before July 7, a backup execution date.

“I think it’s likely that [Hatter is] going to want to take some look at the competence issue and we’re more interested in getting that resolved on an expedited basis than in forcing the issue on the June 9 date,” Gillette said.