Arizona High Court Delays Execution Indefinitely

The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday put the execution of a convicted killer on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a Kentucky case on the legality of lethal injection.

Lawyers for Jeffrey Landrigan had asked the state high court for an execution stay after the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the Kentucky case.

The state court last month set a Nov. 1 execution date for Landrigan, who killed a Phoenix man in 1989.

The Arizona court order grants an indefinite stay of the execution order.

The order signed by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor said the stay was granted because the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether Kentucky's lethal injection methods violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The Arizona high court has already ruled that the state's methods are constitutional. But they are similar in most ways to the Kentucky procedure now before the nation's high court.

Landrigan's attorney, Dale Baich, said the state stay ``indicates there will be no executions in Arizona in the foreseeable future.''

Baich said he had spoken with Landrigan and ``he was relieved.''

He also said the state Attorney General's Office should not have gone forward with the execution order once the Kentucky case was put on hold.

``The state should have respected the process and waited until the nation's highest court resolved the uncertainty on this issue,'' Baich said. ``Fortunately the state Supreme Court issued a stay.''

The Arizona Attorney General's Office issued a statement saying it disagreed with the court's ruling but did not intend to seek reconsideration or further review.

``The ruling does not affect Landrigan's conviction or sentence, it simply delays the execution date,'' the statement said.

The top law enforcement official in Oklahoma has asked that no execution dates be set until the issue is decided, and other states are considering how to deal with upcoming executions in light of the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Landrigan escaped from an Oklahoma prison in 1989, where he was serving terms for a 1982 murder and a 1986 prison stabbing. After a night of drinking beer in Phoenix a month later, Landrigan killed Chester Dyer by stabbing him and strangling him with an electrical cord.

Robert Charles Comer's execution on May 23 was the last in Arizona and the first in the state since Donald Miller was executed on Nov. 8, 2000.