JUDGES DENY GOVERNOR'S REQUEST ON INMATE CUTS

The federal court panel that ordered California last month to reduce
the population of its overcrowded prisons by 40,000 denied Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's request Thursday to put the planning process
on hold while the state appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger said the governor would ask the high
court today to suspend the panel's orders during the appeal.

At stake is whether the three-judge panel, based in San Francisco,
has the authority to require the state to lower the inmate population
- - by sending fewer people to prison and releasing some to local
custody or monitoring - as a remedy for shoddy medical care.

The panel ruled Aug. 4 that overcrowding in prisons, packed to twice
their designed capacity of 80,000, was the main reason that prison
health care violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual
punishment. The court ordered state officials to submit a plan by
Sept. 18 and said expert testimony showed that the inmate population
could be reduced without increasing crime.

Schwarzenegger has proposed a reduction of 37,000 inmates over two
years by returning fewer parolees to prison for minor violations,
reclassifying some property crimes as misdemeanors, increasing
good-behavior credits and releasing some sick and elderly prisoners a
year early, with electronic monitoring.

The state Senate approved his plan, but the Assembly passed a version
without any early-release provisions.

State lawyers asked the three-judge federal court panel Tuesday to
suspend its order requiring officials to submit an inmate-reduction
plan this month. They disputed the panel's findings that overcrowding
was the chief cause of poor health care and argued that the judges'
proposal for fewer inmates would endanger the public.

The panel consists of U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson of San
Francisco and Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento and Judge Stephen
Reinhardt of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "This court has
been more than patient with the state and its officials," the judges
said, noting that inmates first sued over health care nearly two decades ago.