It noted that the execution date might have been influenced by the fact that the prison's inventory of sodium thiopental, one of the drugs required for lethal injection, would expire on October 1, 2010.

After dragging her to an orange grove, Brown brutally raped and sodomized her and strangled her to death with her shoelace; he also took her identification cards and school books.

[12][13][14] After finding the family's number in a phone book, Brown called Angelina Jordan from a payphone at around 7:30 p.m. to tell her where he left her daughter's body.

[18] Brown was arrested on November 6, 1980, after three witnesses came forward to identify him and his Pontiac Trans Am with a Rubidoux Motors paper plate near the site of the murder.

During a search of Brown's home on November 7, police found Susan's books, a newspaper article about the case, and a Riverside telephone directory in which the page opposite the listing for the Jordan family was folded.

During sentencing hearings, his defense attorney argued that Brown was remorseful and presented evidence of psychiatric problems, including sexual dysfunction.

[19] Brown's defense filed a motion of habeas corpus to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that he received ineffective counsel at his trial and that his sentence was a cruel and unusual punishment that violated the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.

[5] It had undergone an $853,000 renovation that quadrupled its size after U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy D. Fogel blocked the February 2006 execution of convicted murderer Michael Morales because of complaints about lethal injection procedures within the previous chamber.

[28] Defense attorney John Grele described Brown as "a simple man with obvious neuropsychological deficits" who is unprepared to make such a decision.

[27] Arguing that forcing him to decide on the manner of his death is "unconstitutionally medieval," Brown's defense team asked the judge to reconsider allowing the execution to proceed.

[5] Fogel declined to issue a stay of execution,[16] which he stated would have been considered if Brown had selected a single injection and the prison had refused to carry it out.

[22][33] The governor refused Brown's request to commute the sentence to life imprisonment without parole,[31] but he delayed the execution to 9 p.m. on September 30 to provide appeals courts more time to review the case.

[2] The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Fogel to revisit the case because California law specified that the inmate had to choose between the gas chamber and lethal injection, not the drugs themselves.

[30] Fogel admitted his offer to Brown was "ill-advised"[25] and halted the execution to permit time to determine whether the new injection procedures addressed defense arguments of cruel and unusual punishment.

[6] The appeals court also noted that the prison's supply of sodium thiopental, a drug required for lethal injection, was expiring on October 1.

[7] California and other states had run short of the drug because the manufacturer Hospira was unable to meet demand at least until January 2011 because of raw material supply issues.

[22] The office of State Attorney General Jerry Brown pushed to resume capital punishment after the adoption of new regulations in California.

Prosecutor Rod Pacheco, who supported Whitman, said that it would be unfair to accuse Jerry Brown of using the execution for political gain, as they had never discussed the case.