The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation today released its proposed revisions to the lethal injection procedures, a first step toward resuming executions in the state after a four-year halt.

The proposals kick off a new 15-day period for public comment, after which the revised procedures can be adopted and submitted for what is expected to be months of judicial review in state and federal courts to assess the execution method's conformance with state law and the Constitution.

Executions have been on hold since early 2006, when concerns about the state's three-drug method prompted U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose to deem the process a potentially unconstitutional infliction of cruel and unusual punishment.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tasked a special panel with rewriting the lethal injection procedures in 2007, but the revisions were decided behind closed doors and later ruled illegal by a Marin County judge for the state's failure to submit the changes to public scrutiny and comment.

Corrections officials last year sought the public's input in May and June, receiving more than 8,000 comments by letter, e-mail and at a public hearing in Sacramento. Analysis of those suggestions resulted in a few minor changes to the protocols, mostly dealing with the arrangements for witnesses to executions and access to the condemned inmate by chaplains and spiritual advisors. As under the previous practices, an inmate sentenced to death can choose whether to be executed by lethal gas or lethal injection.

Once the lethal injection protocols are formally adopted by the corrections department, both the Marin County judge and Fogel must review and approve them before executions can resume.

California has 697 inmates on death row, but only six are known to have cleared all legal hurdles to their execution.