The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the state's death penalty, which now includes a firing squad as well as lethal injection and the electric chair, is legal. All five justices agreed with at least part of the ruling, opening the door to restart executions in a state that hasn't put an inmate to death since 2011, reports the AP. "Choice cannot be considered cruel because the condemned inmate may elect to have the State employ the method he and his lawyers believe will cause him the least pain," Associate Justice John Few wrote in the majority opinion. As many as eight inmates may be out of traditional appeals. It is unclear when executions could restart or whether lawyers for death row inmates can appeal the ruling.
After South Carolina's supplies of drugs for lethal injections expired, it found no pharmaceutical companies would sell more if they could be publicly identified. Lawmakers authorized the state to create a firing squad in 2021 to give inmates a choice between it and the old electric chair. The inmates sued, saying either choice was cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Constitution. In spring 2023, the Legislature passed a shield law to keep lethal injection drug suppliers secret, and the state announced in September it had the sedative pentobarbital and changed the method of lethal injection execution from using three drugs to just one.
The Supreme Court allowed the inmates to add arguments that the shield law was too secret by not releasing the potency, purity, and stabilization of lethal injection drugs. The state said in its argument before the state Supreme Court in February that lethal injection, electrocution, and firing squad all fit existing death penalty protocols. "Courts have never held the death has to be instantaneous or painless," wrote Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for Gov. Henry McMaster's office.
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But lawyers for the inmates asked the justices to agree with Circuit Judge Jocelyn Newman, who stopped executions with the electric chair or firing squad in September 2022. She cited the inmates' experts, who testified at a trial that prisoners would feel terrible pain whether their bodies were "cooking" by 2,000 volts of electricity in the chair, built in 1912, or their hearts were stopped by bullets from the yet-to-be used firing squad. On the shield law, the attorneys for the inmate said they need to know if there is a regular supplier for the drug, since it typically only has a shelf life of 45 days and what guidelines are in place to test the drug and make sure it is what the seller claims.
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