California has abandoned the legal defense of its delay-ridden lethal injection procedures, moving ahead to adopt a single-drug option that has been embraced by other states trying to enforce their death penalty laws.

The Brown administration has decided against appealing a May ruling that invalidated the state’s three-drug execution method, which has been mired in years of state and federal court legal tangles.

Faced with a Wednesday deadline, the state chose not to seek a California Supreme Court review of the decision striking down the three-drug procedure because state officials failed to follow administrative rules when adopting them several years ago.

A prison system spokeswoman said the governor and other state officials will proceed with working out a method of executing condemned inmates with a single fatal dose of a sedative, which other states — such as Ohio, Arizona and Washington — have adopted to short-circuit legal challenges to their lethal injection procedures. (Mercury News)