The Region - News from Dec. 5, 1985

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown has echoed the predictions of state Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and Justice Stanley Mosk that there may be as many as five gas chamber deaths before next November’s election. Brown told fellow Democrats at a campaign strategy session in Los Angeles that what he called “a series of executions” will defuse criticism of Bird and some of her colleagues and capital punishment will become a “non-issue.” Last month, Mosk predicted executions would occur in what he referred to as “the foreseeable future.” Bird has predicted “massive executions” in California “in a couple of years.”