South Carolina wants to bring back electric chair and firing squads

South Carolina wants to bring back the firing squad and the electric chair as the state argues that “painless” deaths are not mandated.

Among the 33 prisoners on death row in the Palmetto State, four inmates are arguing that the electric chair and firing squad are cruel and unusual punishments. The inmates also claim a 2023 law that allows lethal injections is too secretive about many details of the new drug.

However, the governor of the Palmetto State disagrees, saying all three methods fit the existing protocol and painless executions are not mandated by law.

“Courts have never held the death has to be instantaneous or painless,” wrote Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for Gov. Henry McMaster’s office.

Currently, the electric chair serves as South Carolina’s secondary option if lethal injection doesn’t work. Lawmakers added the firing squad to the list of options in 2021.

In September, the state changed its lethal injection method to using the sedative pentobarbital, meaning inmates would only need one injection instead of three. Very little is known about the new drug and prison officials have only said the method is similar to the protocol followed by the federal government and six other states.

The inmates argue pentobarbital, compounded and mixed, has a shelf life of about 45 days. They want to know if there is a regular supplier for the drug and what guidelines are in place to test the drug.

If the drug is too weak, an inmate might not die. If it is too strong, it could form tiny clumps that would cause intense pain when injected, court papers claim.

“No inmate in the country has ever been put to death with such little transparency about how he or she would be executed,” Justice 360 lawyer Lindsey Vann wrote.

Lawyers for the state, however, argue the inmates only want that information so they can find the drug company and pressure them to stop.

The state has not proposed adding nitrogen gas, like Alabama, which recently performed the first execution using the toxic chemical.

South Carolina hasn’t performed capital punishment in nearly 13 years after the drugs used for lethal injection expired and companies refused to sell to prison unless they could hide their identities from the public.

During a 90-minute hearing on Tuesday, judges questioned if the firing squad would be considered unusual punishment as it has only been used three times in total in the last 50 years and all have taken place in Utah.

They also questioned the electric conductivity of the human skull and whether or not modern science had answers to whether or not the method is more painful or cruel and originally ruled a century ago.

South Carolina asked the Supreme Court to toss out a 2022 lower court ruling that said the electric chair and firing squad were cruel.

Circuit Judge Jocelyn Newman sided with the inmates in November, saying prisoners would face terrible pain whether their bodies were “cooking” by 2,000 volts of electricity or if they were shot three times by a firing squad.

More than a decade ago, South Carolina carried out roughly three executions per year and had around 60 death row inmates. Since then, several have won appeals, lowering the number to 33.

Only three prisoners have been sent to death row in the past 13 years in the state due to the lack of lethal injection drugs and more vigorous defenses against it. Many prosecutors are now accepting life in prison without parole rather than seeking the death penalty.

With Post wires.