South Carolina Brings Back Execution By Firing Squad
In a statement released on March 18,2022 by the South Carolina Department of Corrections, it was announced that the state will now be carrying out executions by firing squad. The state has not had any executions since 2011 because it could not get the required drugs needed to carry out executions by lethal injection.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed a bill that made the electric chair the states default method of execution. The firing squad is now an alternative method in case lethal injection is not available. Death row inmates have the right to choose between one of the three methods.
Senator Dick Harpootlian and former prosecutor who has witnessed a number of electrocutions was the first to introduce the bill stating that prisoners are burned to death in the chair and feels death by firing squad is less painful. Both electrocution and firing squad were both replaced by lethal injection which many feel is more humane.
In 2017 the governor and the director of the SCDOC held a press conference in which they lied about the state’s inability to carry out the execution of death row inmate Bobby Wayne Stone because of not being able to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injection. They also tried to prevent the public from learning who the drug manufacturers were who supplied the state.
Inmate Richard Moore was set to be executed on December 4, 2020 and the state refused to inform Moore on how the execution was to be carried out. Moore’s lawyer stated that never in history has an inmate been denied access to execution protocols. In November of 2020 The Supreme Court stayed the execution citing that the state was not able to obtain the drugs needed for execution.
So far South Carolina is the only state to resort back to this less humane way of execution.
0 Comments