COLOMBIA, SC – South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the death penalty in the state, which now includes a firing squad as well as lethal injection and the electric chair, is legal.
All five judges agreed with at least part of the ruling, opening the door to restarting executions in a state that has not sentenced an inmate to death since 2011. But two of the judges said they felt the firing squad was not a legal way to kill an inmate and one of them felt that the electric chair was a cruel and unusual punishment.
O death penalty law is legal because, rather than trying to inflict pain, the choice among the three execution methods makes it appear that lawmakers are genuinely against inflicting pain and making the death penalty as humane as possible, Associate Justice John Few wrote in the majority opinion .
Up to eight inmates may be outside of traditional resources. It is unclear when executions will be able to resume or whether lawyers for death row inmates will be able to appeal the decision.
South Carolina has executed 43 inmates since the death penalty was restarted in the US in 1976. Almost all inmates opted for lethal injection.
“The choice cannot be considered cruel because the condemned prisoner can choose to have the State employ the method that he and his lawyers believe will cause him the least pain,” Few wrote.
South Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2011. The state’s supplies of lethal injection drugs have expired, and no pharmaceutical company would sell more if they could be publicly identified.
Lawmakers authorized the state to create a firing squad in 2021 to give inmates the choice between it and the old-fashioned electric chair. The prisoners sued, saying any choice was cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited by the Constitution.
In spring 2023, the Legislature passed a shield law to keep lethal injection drug providers secret and the state announced in September he had the sedative pentobarbital and changed the method of executing the lethal injection from three drugs to just one.
The Supreme Court allowed inmates to add arguments that the shield law was too secretive by not releasing the potency, purity and stabilization of lethal injection drugs.
South Carolina has 32 inmates on death row. Four prisoners are suing, but four others have also been left without appeals, although two of them face a competency hearing before they are executed, according to Justiça 360, a group that describes itself as fighting for prisoners and for justice and transparency in the death penalty and others. important criminal cases.
The state said in its argument before the state Supreme Court in February that lethal injection, electrocution and firing squad fall within existing death penalty protocols. “Courts have never held that death must be instantaneous or painless,” wrote Grayson Lambert, a lawyer in Gov. Henry McMaster’s office.
But prisoners’ lawyers asked the justices to side with Judge Jocelyn Newman, who halted executions by electric chair or firing squad.
She cited the inmates’ experts, who testified in a trial that prisoners would feel excruciating pain if their bodies were “cooking” with 2,000 volts of electricity in the chair, built in 1912, or if their hearts were stopped by bullets – assuming the three shooters were on target – from the future used firing squad.
Regarding the protection law, the prisoner’s lawyers said they need to know if there is a regular supplier of the medicine, since it normally has an expiration date of just 45 days, and what guidelines exist to test the medicine and ensure it is valid. what the seller claims.
Too weak, and prisoners can suffer without dying. Very strong, the drug’s molecules can form small clumps that would cause intense pain when injected, according to court documents.
“No prisoner in the country has ever been sentenced to death with so little transparency about how he would be executed,” Justice 360 attorney Lindsey Vann wrote.
Lawyers for the inmates told judges in February that lethal injection following proper protocols with information about the drug given to the convict in a mansion that matches what other states and federal government use appears to be legal.
South Carolina used to carry out an average of three executions a year and had more than 60 inmates on death row when the last execution was carried out in 2011. Since then, successful appeals and natural deaths have reduced the number. for 32.
Prosecutors have sent just three new prisoners to death row in the past 13 years. Facing Rising Costs, Shortages of Lethal Injectable Drugs, and More vigorous defensesthey are choosing to accept a guilty plea and life in prison without parole.
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