New judge to hear execution lawsuit

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(09-01) 15:58 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A lawsuit that has led to a 5 1/2-year halt on executions in California was reassigned to a federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday because the San Jose judge who ordered the moratorium is going on leave.

The federal courts' executive committee for coastal Northern California transferred the case to U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg, who joined the court in 2009.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who has presided over the case since it was filed in 2006, was appointed in July as the chief executive of the Federal Judicial Center, the research arm of the U.S. courts. He will leave next month for a stint of between four and seven years in Washington, D.C., but will keep his judicial status and can return to the bench when he leaves the center.

Fogel issued a stay of execution in February 2006 to Michael Morales, convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi (San Joaquin County).

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/01/BAA61KV4S6.DTL

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1. This will be intersting n/t