Proposition 66 was sold to voters as a surefire way to speed up the state’s decades-long death penalty appeals process, but its ability to do that was cast into doubt Thursday after the California Supreme Court ruled that a five-year deadline imposed by the initiative is “directive, not mandatory.” In other words, it’s a goal, not a hard deadline.

Still, the decision could clear the way for executions to resume in California, where no one has been put to death in over a decade and 18 of the more than 750 death row inmates already have exhausted their appeals.

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Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar wrote a concurring and dissenting opinion arguing that the court should go further. Justice Raymond J. Ikola, who also sat in on the case because of the recusals, joined his opinion.

“What reasonable voters would have clearly recognized … is that Proposition 66 contained a genuine, enforceable, five-year deadline for completion of the state court appeal and resolution of the initial habeas corpus petition in death penalty cases. Candor requires us to be equally clear about whether such a deadline accords with our law: It does not,” he wrote.