South Carolina wants to restart executions using firing squads and the ELECTRIC CHAIR as state prosecutors say prisoners’ deaths don’t need to be quick and painless

South Carolina wants to reverse executions using firing squads and the electric chair, with a prosecutor saying prisoners’ deaths do not have to be quick and painless.

Lawyers for four South Carolina death row inmates argue the old electric chair and new firing squad are cruel and unusual punishments.

There are currently 33 inmates on South Carolina’s death row, a group of whom are now opposing certain methods of execution because there are no longer any appeals.

South Carolina says all three methods they are trying to use fit into existing protocols.

“Courts have never held that death must be immediate or painless,” wrote Grayson Lambert, an attorney for Gov. Henry McMaster’s office.

Lawyers for four South Carolina death row inmates argue the old electric chair and new firing squad are cruel and unusual punishment

Pictured: The exterior of the South Carolina Supreme Court building in Columbia, SC

If Supreme Court justices allow executions to restart and any additional appeals are unsuccessful, South Carolina’s death chamber, unused since May 2011, could suddenly become quite crowded.

Four inmates have filed charges, but four others have also been left without appeals, although two of them must undergo a competency hearing before they can be executed, according to Justice 360, a prisoner fairness organization.

“Courts have never held that death must be immediate or painless,” wrote Grayson Lambert, an attorney for Gov. Henry McMaster’s office.

The state has not carried out executions since 2011 after supplies of lethal injection drugs expired and companies refused to sell any more unless the transaction remained private.

South Carolina used to average three executions a year. But only 33 inmates are awaiting a death sentence and only three have been sent to death row since the last execution in 2011.

This comes as prosecutors face rising costs and stronger defenses, choosing to accept guilty pleas and life in prison without parole.

Three years ago, the Legislature passed a law creating a firing squad and giving prisoners the choice of dying by bullets to the heart or in the state’s electric chair, first used in 1913 to kill a prisoner. kill.

But that law was suspended after death row inmates challenged that both the firing squad and the electric chair are constitutionally prohibited cruel and unusual punishments.

A ruling in favor of the prisoners would restart executions, allowing a prisoner to choose lethal injection since the drugs were available.

In November 2023, Judge Jocelyn Newman sided with the inmates, whose experts testified that inmates would feel terrible pain if their bodies were “cooked” by 2,000 volts of electricity in the 1912 chair.

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

South Carolina hasn’t carried out an execution since 2011 after its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and companies refused to sell any more unless the transaction remained private

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

Murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith was sent to death last night in Atmore, Alabama, after the Supreme Court rejected his eleventh request for mercy.

It took 22 minutes for him to die. He inhaled a fatal dose of nitrogen, administered through a mask, and then suffered ‘convulsions’ until he was unconscious.

Smith was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in November 2022, but survived after it failed.

Alabama – one of only three states to have legalized nitrogen executions – ruled that Mr. Smith would be put to death via nitrogen instead.

Although the state calls the method “humane,” experts say it can cause excessive pain and humiliation, warning he could be left in a vegetative state rather than die, or he could choke on his own vomit.

Nitrogen gas has been labeled ‘torture’ by the UN and scientists have largely banned animal testing

Kenneth Eugene Smith was sentenced to death in 1996 after admitting to killing the wife of a preacher-for-hire, who was beaten and stabbed in 1988. He was executed last month.

Marshall, speaking to reporters, defended nitrogen gas, saying it was so effective he plans to use it in other executions

The American Veterinary Medical Association has ruled that the execution method is too cruel to use on most animals because the suffocation process is too “harrowing” for some species.

And United Nations officials said it could violate human rights treaties banning “torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall brushed aside criticism of the controversial execution by nitrogen hypoxia of murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith, saying it was a “proven” method he plans to use again on other death row inmates.