Kirkpatrick Requests a Stay of Execution

SAN FRANCISCO —  Proclaiming his innocence, convicted double-murderer William Kirkpatrick Jr. on Thursday asked a federal judge for a stay of execution, an action that probably will block his scheduled Jan. 26 death by lethal injection.

Kirkpatrick wrote to the Supreme Court in July saying he was guilty and demanding to be executed. He said in a statement distributed Thursday by a legal defense group that he had never abandoned his case.

“Mr. Kirkpatrick does want, and has wanted, to pursue his many constitutional claims, chief among them that he is innocent,” said the California Appellate Project in a statement on Kirkpatrick’s behalf.

The statement, and the federal court papers signed by Kirkpatrick, said he was unhappy with a series of court-appointed lawyers and wanted a new lawyer for his federal appeal.

Under federal court rules, a condemned state prisoner is automatically entitled to a stay of execution after filing a federal appeal. The stay allows life-tenure federal judges to review the decisions of elected state judges and lasts until the appeal is resolved, usually many years.

U.S. District Judge William Keller has scheduled a hearing by telephone conference call Friday.

Kirkpatrick, 35, was convicted of fatally shooting two Taco Bell employees during a robbery in September 1983 at the Burbank restaurant, where he formerly worked.

In his first appeal, filed automatically as in every California capital case, the state Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence in 1991, agreeing with the trial judge’s refusal to let him act as his own lawyer. After the U.S. Supreme Court denied a review last March, Kirkpatrick refrained from immediately filing the federal appeal pursued by most prisoners, and his execution date was set.

California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren took no action to oppose Thursday’s stay request. But Lungren criticized the California Appellate Project, a government-funded organization that assists defense lawyers in death penalty appeals.

Lungren said Kirkpatrick had refused to meet with the agency’s lawyers until they sent him packages this week with such items as tennis shoes, tobacco and candy.

The organization said later that the gifts were not bought with taxpayer funds and were not an inducement for Kirkpatrick to file his appeal.