SPARTANBURG, SC — Prosecutors in South Carolina will seek the death penalty against a man who was arrested nearly two years ago and accused of fatally shooting five people.
The 7th Circuit Solicitor’s Office filed a motion last week announcing its intention to seek the death penalty for 26-year-old James Douglas Drayton, news outlets reported. The law firm declined to comment on the decision. No trial date has been set.
Drayton was arrested in October 2022 and charged with five counts of murder and five counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime. The victims were found in a home in Inman, about 13 miles northwest of Spartanburg. Four people were dead at the scene: Thomas Ellis Anderson, 37; James Derek Baldwin, 49; Mark Allen Hewitt, 59; and Adam Daniel Morley, 32. The fifth person shot, Roman Christean Megael Rocha, 19, died later at a hospital.
Drayton’s attorney, District Attorney Michael David Morin, declined to comment, citing the ongoing case.
When Drayton was arrested, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said Drayton confessed to the killings, telling police he was high on methamphetamine and hadn’t slept for four days. Drayton turned over the gun he said he used to kill everyone in the house where he was staying, a place where people often went to use drugs, Wright said.
Drayton was arrested in Georgia after crashing during a police chase. He was driving a car that had been taken from Inman’s home, Wright said in 2022. Officers in Burke County, Georgia — about 145 miles (233 kilometers) away — said they were pursuing Drayton after he tried to rob a convenience store at gunpoint and kidnap an employee.
South Carolina, one of 27 states that allow the death penalty, has not carried out an execution since 2011. A recent South Carolina Supreme Court ruling By retaining the use of the firing squad, lethal injection, or the electric chair, the way was cleared for a resumption of executions in the state.