Wash. prepares for first execution since 2001

Officials at the Washington State Penitentiary were making final preparations Thursday as the clock ticked toward the first execution of a Washington inmate in nine years.

Death penalty opponents have planned vigils and protests in larger cities across the state, and prison officials have said they will erect barricades for the protesters and media expected to gather outside the southeast Washington prison.

Cal Coburn Brown, 52, is scheduled to be executed at 12:01 a.m. Friday for the 1991 murder of a 22-year-old Seattle-area woman.

He would be the first Washington inmate to die by lethal injection of just one drug.

Brown was just hours from being injected with a three-drug cocktail in March 2009 when he received a last-minute stay of execution. The state Supreme Court granted the stay because another inmate had been granted a hearing on the constitutionality of the state's lethal injection method.

Since then, Washington changed to a one-drug execution method and named a new four-member team to carry out the death sentence. Members of the team have not been publicly identified.

The previous team resigned, fearing they might be identified after several inmates challenged the state's three-drug method and questioned the executioners' qualifications.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied Brown's request to halt his execution. He could still appeal a request that was denied Wednesday by the state Supreme Court, which was also hearing a third appeal attempt sometime Thursday.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, who has steadfastly supported the death sentence in this case, said he would witness the execution.

"It's important for me to be there, first to be with the family, who has been through every step of this case for the last 19 years," he said. "It's important for me too, if we have a death penalty in this state, to not shy away from the ultimate administration of that sentence.

"I feel I need to be there to represent the system," he said.

Brown confessed to kidnapping Holly Washa, of Burien, Wash., at knifepoint, then raping, torturing and killing her. He left her body in the trunk of a car.

Brown confessed while California authorities were interrogating him over an attack on a woman there.

Washa's father, brother and two sisters were expected to travel to Washington from Nebraska to witness the execution. Washa had moved to the Seattle area from Ogallala, Neb.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Maria Peterson said Brown will be transferred from his cell Thursday to a holding cell above the execution chamber, where a gurney sits behind a glass window.

Originally from San Jose, Calif., Brown has a history of violent crime. He was convicted of assaults in California and Oregon, and served seven years in an Oregon prison. Brown was released on parole just two months before Washa's death in 1991.

Since 1904, 77 men have been put to death in Washington. The last inmate executed was 58-year-old James Homer Elledge, who died by lethal injection for the 1998 stabbing and strangulation of Eloise Fitzner, 47, at the Lynnwood church where he was a janitor.

Eight other men, including Brown, have been sentenced to death and are incarcerated at the state penitentiary.