South Carolina House Adds Firing Squad to Execution Methods

2021-05-05

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COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA - The South Carolina House voted Wednesday to add a firing squad to the state's execution methods amid a lack of lethal-injection drugs - a measure meant to jump-start executions in a state that once had one of the busiest death chambers in the nation.

The bill, approved 66-43, will require condemned inmates to choose either being shot or electrocuted if lethal injection drugs aren't available. The state is one of only nine to still use the electric chair and will become only the fourth to allow a firing squad.

South Carolina last executed a death row inmate 10 years ago Thursday.

The Senate already approved the bill in March, 32-11. The House only made minor technical changes to that version, meaning that after a routine final vote in the House and a signoff by the Senate, it will go to Republican Governor Henry McMaster, who has said he will sign it.

There are several prisoners in line to be executed. Corrections officials said three of South Carolina's 37 death row inmates are out of appeals. But lawsuits against the new death penalty rules are also likely.

"Three living, breathing human beings with a heartbeat that this bill is aimed at killing," said Democratic Representative Justin Bamberg, rhythmically thumping the microphone in front of him. "If you push the green button at the end of the day and vote to pass this bill out of this body, you may as well be throwing the switch yourself."

Chair use began in 1912

South Carolina first began using the electric chair in 1912 after taking over the death penalty from individual counties, which usually hanged prisoners. The other three states that allow a firing squad are Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Three inmates, all in Utah, have been killed by firing squad since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Nineteen inmates have died in the electric chair this century.

Currently, South Carolina inmates can choose between the electric chair and lethal injection, but the state's supply of drugs for injection has expired and it can't buy more. The bill retains lethal injection as the primary method of execution if the state has the drugs but requires prison officials to use the electric chair or firing squad if it doesn't.

"Those families of victims to these capital crimes are unable to get any closure because we are caught in this limbo stage where every potential appeal has been exhausted and the legally imposed sentences cannot be carried out," said Republican Representative Weston Newton.

The combination of the lack of drugs and prosecutors' decisions to seek guilty pleas with guaranteed life sentences over death penalty trials have cut the state's death row population from 60 to 37 inmates since the last execution was carried out in 2011. From 2000 to 2010, the state averaged just under two executions a year.

Some natural deaths, some resentencing

The reduction also has come from natural deaths, plus prisoners winning appeals and being resentenced to life without parole. Prosecutors have sent just three new inmates to death row in the past decade.

Democrats in the House offered several amendments, including not applying the new execution rules to current death row inmates; livestreaming executions on the internet; outlawing the death penalty outright; and requiring lawmakers to watch executions. All failed.

Opponents of the bill brought up George Stinney, the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th century. He was 14 when he was sent to South Carolina's electric chair after a one-day trial in 1944 for killing two white girls. A judge threw out the Black teen's conviction in 2014.

Other opponents noted that fellow Southern state Virginia outlawed the death penalty earlier this year. They also pointed out that the three executions carried out so far this year in the United States are the fewest since 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court was reviewing lethal injection.

Newton said the bill wasn't the place to debate the morality of executions.

"This bill doesn't deal with the merits or the propriety of whether we should have a death penalty in South Carolina," Newton said.