Lecturer and US District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel is the feature of the following New York Times article on the judge’s thoughts toward the death penalty:

On Tuesday, Judge Jeremy Fogel of the Federal District Court in northern California toured a new facility at San Quentin State Prison for executing inmates. Five years ago, in Morales v. Tilton, he ordered the state to halt all executions after he found that the way it administered its lethal injection created too much risk that an inmate would suffer extreme pain.

The inspection was part of his review of a proposed new method for injecting those drugs to assess whether he should allow California to resume executions.

Judge Fogel stressed in his 2006 opinion that, in focusing on the administration of the lethal three-drug cocktail, “this case presents a very narrow question.” But that question cannot be answered unless the judge also asks the state why it believes that one of the drugs, sodium thiopental, is reliable.

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Judge Fogel’s doubts about California’s use of the death penalty are comparatively recent. He rejected two other challenges to lethal injections as delaying tactics. In 2006, however, he stayed the execution of Michael Angelo Morales after the state failed to comply with his order that the injection be administered by a state-licensed medical professional.

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In an essay about this case, Judge Fogel was punctilious about not saying whether he supports or opposes the death penalty. Instead, he expressed faith in the legal process as a means of fairly resolving even the most difficult issues.

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