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"An influential federal appeals court judge says the nation's third lethal injection execution in six months to go awry underscores his call to bring back firing squads.In an interview Thursday, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski said lethal injection was a dishonest attempt to disguise the brutal nature of capital punishment.Kozinski first wrote of his distaste for lethal injection on Monday even while arguing against delaying the execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood III in Phoenix. Wood gasped for breath for 90-minutes and took nearly two hours to die Wednesday after receiving a lethal injection for killing his estranged girlfriend and her father.Kozinski said properly trained firing squads are a foolproof way to quickly execute an inmate and avoid complications surrounding lethal injection.Last week, a federal judge ruled California's death penalty was unconstitutional because lengthy and unpredictable delays have resulted in an arbitrary and unfair capital punishment system.California has not executed a prisoner since 2006.Since the current death penalty system was adopted by California voters 35 years ago, more than 900 people have been sentenced to death, but only 13 have been executed.U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said, \"As for the random few for whom execution does become a reality, they will have languished for so long on Death Row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and will be arbitrary.\"The case was brought by a death row inmate against the warden of San Quentin state prison. Carney ruled that California's death penalty is an empty promise and violates the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.Carney noted that death penalty appeals can last decades and, as a result, most condemned inmates are likely to die of natural causes before their executions are carried out.Carney's ruling came in a legal petition brought by Ernest Dewayne Jones, sentenced to die in 1994 after being convicted of murdering and raping his girlfriend's mother.Jones remains on death row \"with complete uncertainty as to when, or even whether,\" his execution will come, the judge wrote, adding, \"Mr. Jones is not alone.\" Carney's ruling could be appealed by the governor or state attorney general, who both oppose the death penalty. For now, Jones will likely remain on death row. Carney noted that \"arbitrary factors\" such as the manner in which paperwork is handled are what \"determine whether an individual will actually be executed.\"\u00A0"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.ksbw.com/article/judge-argues-for-return-of-firing-squad-executions/1054591>