GREENBELT, Md. (AP) – A federal judge Tuesday granted an indefinite stay of execution for a convicted triple murderer whose lawyers challenged the way Maryland performs lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment.

In his 22-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte cited the state’s failure to provide Steven Oken’s attorneys with a detailed description of execution procedures until Friday. They had requested them a month ago.

“Fundamental fairness, if not due process, requires that the execution protocol that will regulate an inmate’s death be forwarded to him in prompt and timely fashion,” Messitte wrote.

The state attorney general’s office appealed Tuesday’s ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., and was preparing a motion to lift the stay of execution, spokesman Kevin Enright said. He declined to comment further.

If the federal appeals court lifts the stay by Friday, the execution could proceed under the original warrant under Maryland law. Oken also has an appeal pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and has asked Gov. Robert Ehrlich for clemency.

Oken, 42, was scheduled to be executed sometime this week for the 1987 rape and murder of Dawn Marie Garvin, a 20-year-old newlywed. He also was convicted of killing Patricia Hirt, his wife’s sister, and Lori Ward, a motel clerk in Maine, during a 15-day spree.

Garvin’s relatives were angered by Tuesday’s ruling.

“I’m totally disgusted with our judicial system. It’s a total miscarriage of justice,” her mother, Betty Romano, said. “What more does anybody need? He’s pleaded guilty. He’s admitted to the killings.”

He’s used 17 years of the taxpayers’ money.”

Garvin’s father, Fred J. Romano, heard about the stay while he demonstrated with other pro-death penalty advocates outside the prison where Oken would be executed. He held a sign that read, “Death to Murderers.”

“I am quite upset, but we’ve met with hurdles like this before,” he said. “All I can say is, we won’t go away. We will be persistent. We believe in what we’re doing. They will never hear the end of us.”

Messitte said in his opinion that he appreciated the desire of Garvin’s family “after so many years, to see closure in this case.” But he said it was the court’s duty to see that constitutional guarantees are respected.

Defense lawyers have questioned whether a barbiturate that was to be the first of three drugs administered to Oken would keep him from feeling pain.

At a hearing Monday in federal court, attorney Jerome Nickerson told Messitte that Oken’s lawyers need more time to review the execution protocols that the state had provided to the defense only three days earlier.

Nickerson said the document was “very, very disturbing indeed” and there is “a substantial likelihood of the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

David Kennedy, an assistant state attorney general, said at the hearing that the defense was trying to create “a false emergency” and had known the basics of the method of execution for years.

In his ruling, Messitte referred to the Supreme Court’s decision last month in the case of Alabama inmate David Nelson, who had challenged planned procedures for lethal injection in his case as “unconstitutionally cruel.” He said that Oken, like the Alabama inmate, could raise questions about how he would be executed.

Messitte ordered a hearing for July 19.

Oken’s defense team lost two motions Monday in the state Court of Appeals, including a request for a stay of execution and for permission to appeal a circuit court decision refusing to reopen Oken’s appeal.

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On the Net:

U.S. District Court: http://www.mdd.uscourts.gov

AP-ES-06-15-04 1252EDT