A South Carolina judge is considering whether to temporarily halt a new law effectively forcing death row prisoners to choose to die by either electric chair or firing squad.
The Associated Press
The lawsuit was filed shortly after Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law a bill aimed at restarting executions after an involuntary 10-year pause, when the state ran out of lethal injection drugs. The new law compels the condemned to choose to be electrocuted or shot if lethal injection drugs are not available. Prior to the law, prisoners could choose between lethal injection or electrocution.
The South Carolina Supreme Court set Sigmon’s execution for June 18 after prison officials indicated the state’s electric chair was ready for use. Owens is slated to die a week later, on June 25. “South Carolina is not going back to a method of execution that is intended to cause pain,” said Daniel Plyler, a lawyer representing the corrections agency.
Three men, including Owens and Sigmon, have run out of traditional appeals in recent months, leading the court to schedule their execution dates earlier this year, before the passage of the new law. Those dates were delayed after the corrections agency acknowledged it could not procure lethal injection drugs to carry out the executions.
South Carolina is one of eight states to still use the electric chair and four to allow a firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Prison officials have been researching how firing squads carry out executions elsewhere, but have not indicated a timeline for when the firing squad will be up and running.
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