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• "The manufacture of the drug will expire in 2014 and we will never be able to use that protocol again," she said. "We have a single drug method which they can use now." • Deputy Attorney General Jay Goldman said the 9th Circuit has not approved the one-drug method. • Hanissey said the firing squad was long ago ruled cruel and unusual punishment, but the court could order an execution "by any means currently authorized." • Cooley's motion involves the execution of two murderers who have been on death row for more than 25 years. • Mitchell Sims and Tiequon Cox have exhausted all of their appeals. Cox, a gang member, was convicted of shooting a grandmother, her daughter and two grandchildren in 1984. Sims was convicted of shooting a pizza deliveryman in Glendale in 1985 after killing two co-workers at a pizza restaurant in Hanahan, S.C. • He fled to California with his girlfriend, who also was convicted and is serving a life sentence. He also faces a death sentence in South Carolina. • The last execution in California was in 2006, the same year that a federal judge imposed a moratorium following complaints that the three-drug method was causing excruciating pain and was cruel and unusual punishment. A state ruling in 2011 cited the same issue in suggesting that the method did not comply with the state Administrative Procedures Act. • There have also been objections from the medical community to having medical personnel including anesthesiologists participate in executions. • The moratorium is expected to last into 2013. In the interim, voters face a ballot initiative in November that would replace the death penalty with life in prison without (Continued on page 18)
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