South Carolina wants to resume executions by firing squad, electric chair and lethal injection

South Carolina wants to resume executions of prisoners by firing squad, electric chair and lethal injection.

What is at stake are the death sentences of 33 prisoners who are on South Carolina’s death row. Although there has been no formal moratorium, the state has not carried out any executions in nearly thirteen years following the use of lethal injection drugs. they won and companies will refuse to sell more to prison officials unless they could hide their identity from the public.

Lawyers for four death row inmates who have been left without appeal are now expected to argue before the South Carolina Supreme Court that the old electric chair of the state and the new firing squad are cruel punishments and unusual.

Lawyers for the inmates also plan to argue Tuesday that a 2023 law aims to allow the new use of lethal injections keeps too many details secret about the new medicine and the protocol applied to kill prisoners.

South Carolina says all three methods fall under existing protocols. “The courts have never held that death should exist instant or painless“wrote Grayson Lambert, an attorney in Gov. Henry McMaster’s office.

If Supreme Court justices allow executions to resume and any new appeals fail, South Carolina’s execution chamber, unused since May 2011, he might suddenly be quite active.

Four inmates have filed lawsuits, but four others are left without resources, although two of them will have a competency hearing before they can be executed, according to Justice 360, a group that describes itself as an advocate for prisoners, fairness and transparency in justice. death penalty cases and other major criminal cases.

The state asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling after a 2022 trial that found the electric chair and firing squad are cruel and unusual punishments. The court’s justices added questions about last year’s identity protection law to Tuesday’s appeal and arguments.

District Judge Jocelyn Newman sided with the inmates whose experts testified that the prisoners They would experience terrible pain if their body were “cooked” with 2,000 volts of electricity in the electric chair, built in 1912, or if his heart was stopped by the bullets of the firing squad not yet used, assuming that the three shooters hit the target.

South Carolina’s current execution law requires inmates to be sent to the electric chair unless they choose a different method.

Lawmakers allowed the addition of a firing squad in 2021. No legislation has been proposed in South Carolina to add nitrogen gas, which was used for the first time to execute a prisoner last month in Alabama.

As for identity protection law, lawyers for the inmates argue that South Carolina’s law is more secretive than that of any other state. They said prison officials should not be allowed to hide the identities of pharmaceutical companies, the names of anyone who witnessed an execution and the precise procedure applied.

Death with pentobarbital

In September, prison officials announced they had done so the sedative pentobarbital and changed the execution method to lethal injection of three drugs into one. They released few other details other than to say that South Carolina’s method is similar to the protocol followed by the federal government and six other states.

The detainees claim that the compound and mixed pentobarbital It has a useful life of approximately 45 days. They want to know if there is a regular supplier of the drug and what guidelines are in place to ensure the dosage is adequate.

If it’s too weak, Prisoners can suffer and not die. If it is too strong, the drug molecules can form small clumps which could cause intense pain when injectedaccording to court documents.

“No inmate in the country has been executed with so little transparency about how they would be executed,” wrote Lindsey Vann, an attorney for Justice 360.

Lawyers for the state have said the inmates want the information so they can find out who is supplying the drugs and publicly pressure them to stop.

“Each new information is a piece of the puzzle, and with enough pieces, data subjects (or anyone else) can put them together to identify an individual or entity protected by the Identity Protection Act,” Lambert wrote.

South Carolina was performing an average of three executions per year and more than 60 prisoners were sentenced to death during the last execution in 2011. Since thensuccessful appeals and deaths reduced the number to 33.

In the last thirteen years, prosecutors have sent only three new inmates to death row. Faced with rising costs, a lack of lethal injection drugs and stronger defenses, they are choosing to accept guilty pleas and sentences of life in prison without parole.