A second inmate scheduled to die later this month under South Carolina’s recently reworked capital punishment law has requested permission to take part in another inmate’s federal request to block his electrocution.
FILE - This March 2019, file photo, provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state's electric chair in Columbia, S.C. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law last week a bill that would essentially restart the state's stalled death penalty after a lack of lethal injection drugs has delayed several executions. The new law would let condemned inmates choose between the electric chair or a newly formed firing squad.
In papers filed in federal court on Friday, attorneys for Freddie Owens sought permission to intervene in a request filed a day earlier by Brad Sigmon. On Thursday, Sigmon's lawyers sought to halt his upcoming execution in the electric chair, arguing the state hasn’t exhausted all methods to procure the drugs needed to carry out lethal injection, South Carolina's default method.
Both men have exhausted their traditional appeals. Owens' execution is scheduled for June 25. Sigmon is scheduled to die a week earlier, on June 18. A hearing in the federal case is set for Wednesday. That lawsuit was filed shortly after Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law a bill that forces death row inmates for now to choose between the electric chair or a newly formed firing squad, in hopes the state can restart executions after an involuntary 10-year pause that the state attributed to the inability to procure lethal injection drugs.