Brown's Lawyers Make Last-Ditch Effort To Stop Execution

Lawyers for Cal Brown have filed yet another appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a last-ditch effort to stop his looming execution, hoping to overturn the decision made by the U.S. District Court in Seattle minutes earlier.

Other appeals with the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court were denied earlier Thursday.

WATCH IT: Prosecutor: Brown 'Earned Way To Death Row'

" I see nothing that will keep us from going forward with this execution tonight," said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. “That doesn’t mean that there won’t be a sympathetic judge somewhere on the west coast that might issue a stay. That could happen. Anything could happen.”

Meanwhile, officials at the Washington State Penitentiary continue to make final preparations for the execution.

Brown has spent most of the day in his usual cell at the Washington State Penitentiary, awaiting execution early Friday morning.

WATCH IT: Prosecutor Who Sent Brown To Death Row Awaits Man's Execution

State Department of Corrections spokeswoman Belinda Stewart says Brown ate biscuits and gravy for breakfast and spent two hours outside his cell, talking on the telephone with his attorneys and family members. He declined lunch, but asked for a last meal of a combination meat pizza, apple pie and root beer.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Maria Peterson said Brown will be transferred from his cell Thursday to a holding cell above the execution chamber, where a gurney sits behind a glass window.

Death penalty opponents have planned vigils and protests in larger cities across the state, and prison officials at the penitentiary have erected barricades for the protesters and media expected to gather outside the Walla Walla prison.

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Brown, 52, is scheduled to be executed at 12:01 a.m. Friday for the 1991 murder of 21-year-old Burien woman Holly Washa. He would be the first Washington inmate to die by lethal injection of just one drug.

Brown was just hours from being injected with a three-drug cocktail in March 2009 when he received a last-minute stay of execution. The state Supreme Court granted the stay because another inmate had been granted a hearing on the constitutionality of the state's lethal injection method.

Since then, Washington changed to a one-drug execution method and named a new four-member team to carry out the death sentence. Members of the team have not been publicly identified.

The previous team resigned, fearing they might be identified after several inmates challenged the state's three-drug method and questioned the executioners' qualifications.

Satterberg, who has steadfastly supported the death sentence in this case, said he would witness the execution.

"It's important for me to be there, first to be with the family, who has been through every step of this case for the last 19 years," he said. "It's important for me too, if we have a death penalty in this state, to not shy away from the ultimate administration of that sentence.

"I feel I need to be there to represent the system," he said.

Brown confessed to kidnapping Washa at knifepoint, then raping, torturing and killing her. He left her body in the trunk of a car.

Brown confessed while California authorities were interrogating him over an attack on a woman there.

Satterberg says Washa's father, brother and two sisters flew into Walla Walla at county expense today. They are resting, he says, for what they hope will be the culmination of a nearly 17 year wait for Brown to die. The prosecutor said the family will remain in seclusion until about an hour before the execution, when they will enter the prison.

“(Brown’s) here tonight because he has earned his way to death row. He’s among the worst of the worst offenders we have ever seen in the state of Washington,” said Satterberg.

Originally from San Jose, Calif., Brown has a history of violent crime. He was convicted of assaults in California and Oregon, and served seven years in an Oregon prison. Brown was released on parole just two months before Washa's death in 1991.

Since 1904, 77 men have been put to death in Washington. The last inmate executed was 58-year-old James Homer Elledge, who died by lethal injection for the 1998 stabbing and strangulation of Eloise Fitzner, 47, at the Lynnwood church where he was a janitor.

Eight other men, including Brown, have been sentenced to death and are incarcerated at the state penitentiary.

Friday's execution is the state's first in nine years.