Right now, the State of California has over 700 people living on its Death Row.  According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 260 are white; 255 are African American; 158 are Hispanic American; and 38 are not categorized. 

You can read the complete California Death Row Inmate list here, which as of April 13, 2011, totals 713 with 19 women included in the tally.  

As we’ve discussed earlier, no one has been executed in California for several years — not since 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen was executed at the age of 76.  Then in 2010, there was a push to resume executions again in the State of California.  Executions were scheduled.  Defense attorneys went to work.

Today, it’s been announced that no one will die at the hands of the California executioner anytime soon.  The California moritorium on executions continues — the reason? 

Some of those defense lawyers – and state prosecutors – jointly posited to the federal judge in the pending federal challenge to California’s lethal injection procedure, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, that they won’t be ready before the end of the year to proceed with their cases. 

The biggest reason for delay? 

It appears that the warden at San Quentin (where the executions would take place) is still getting his executors hired, and the new execution team won’t be hired and on the job before Fall 2011. 

Betcha you thought it was going to be the lack of sodium thiopental, right?  Or maybe that California cannot afford the death penalty anymore?