CORRECTED: California to resume work on bigger death chamber

(In final paragraph, corrects number of people on Death row to 666 from 680)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California will resume construction on a roomier death chamber next Friday after work was delayed by a state budget impasse, hoping the new facility will kick-start its stalled execution process.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement on Thursday that the lethal injection facility at San Quentin State Prison, 18 miles north of San Francisco, should be completed in about 10 weeks.

Executions will be carried out in a six-sided room measuring about 230 square feet, instead of in a chamber originally designed to gas prisoners, which measures about 43 square feet, according to a virtual tour on the department's Web site (www.cdcr.ca.gov).

Other improvements include more viewing galleries and a room for inmates' "spiritual needs."

Work on the project was halted in April amid a lengthy delay in finalizing the state budget, which was finally approved last week.

Corrections officials hope the new chamber will help alleviate concerns raised by a federal judge who blocked the scheduled execution of convicted rapist and murderer Michael Morales in February 2006, a month after the state's last execution.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, a Clinton administration appointee who has termed the lethal injection process "broken," had indicated that he wanted to tour the new facility on October 1 before scheduled hearings on new execution protocols.

California has executed 13 prisoners since 1978, when the state's voters reaffirmed the death penalty. All but the first were executed by lethal injection after a court ruled that the gas chamber represented cruel and unusual punishment.

Most of the 71 deaths on Death Row since 1978 have been from natural causes. A total of 666 people, 15 of them women, were awaiting execution as of August 2, according to the department. The average wait for execution is just over 17 years, more than twice the national rate, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.