State Supreme Court puts measure to speed up executions on hold

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked enforcement of Proposition 66, an initiative that seeks to speed up executions in California, for at least the next five weeks while it considers a lawsuit challenging the measure.

The court halted implementation of Prop. 66 to give both sides time to submit written arguments, due by Jan. 23.

State voters approved Prop. 66 by a 51 percent majority on Nov. 8 while rejecting, by 54 to 46 percent, a competing measure, Prop. 62, that would have repealed California’s death penalty law.

Prop. 66, sponsored by prosecutors, would require the state Supreme Court to rule on death penalty appeals within five years of sentencing, more than twice as fast as its current pace. It would set the same five-year deadline for the second-stage appeals known as habeas corpus and would require defense lawyers to file those appeals to the trial judge within a year, compared with the current three-year deadline.

Another provision would expand the pool of defense lawyers by requiring attorneys to take capital cases if they accept court appointments to represent criminal defendants in other cases. Prop. 66 would also eliminate administrative review of the state’s newly adopted rules for executions by a single drug. Execution using a single drug replaced the state’s previous three-drug procedure.

The suit was filed a day after the election by former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp and Ron Briggs, a former El Dorado County supervisor whose father, state Sen. John Briggs, sponsored the state’s current death penalty law as a 1978 ballot measure.

The suit contends Prop. 66 would interfere with courts’ constitutional authority, cause “confusion and upheaval” in the state’s judiciary, and force both courts and lawyers into hurried and less-reliable decisions in capital cases.

One of the authors of the ballot measure said the court’s order did not mean the suit was likely to succeed, but probably was intended to preserve the status quo.

“There’s nothing wrong with waiting a month,” said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which backed Prop. 66. He said most of the arguments in the lawsuit were aimed at individual provisions of the measure, and the only argument that attacks the entire initiative — that it violates the constitutional ban on initiatives covering more than one subject — was “meritless to the point of being frivolous.”

Christina Von der Ahe Rayburn, a lawyer for Van de Kamp and Briggs, countered that the suit challenged several speedup provisions that, if upheld in court, would invalidate all of Prop. 66.

“We’re gratified that the court saw the importance of this issue,” she said.

Defendants in the case include the state Judicial Council. For that reason, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, chairwoman of the council, and Justice Ming Chin, the vice chairman, have removed themselves from the case and will be replaced by two appeals court justices, yet to be named. Tuesday’s order was approved by the court’s remaining five justices.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko