The decision invalidates a state law that was designed to restart executions after a pause officials blame on a shortage of lethal injection drugs.
The decision invalidates a law the South Carolina legislature passed last year that was designed to restart executions after a decade-long pause that officials blame on a shortage of lethal injection drugs. The law forces death row inmates to choose between firing squad or electric chair, with the electric chair as the default method if they do not select one.
Under South Carolina’s firing squad protocol, the inmate is strapped in a backless metal chair with a hood placed over their head. A physician puts an “aiming point” over their heart, then a three-member rifle team fires up to three volleys from 15 feet away. The physician checks vital signs every 60 seconds until none is detectable.For electrocution, the inmate is restrained in the chair with electrodes attached to their head and leg. The executioner delivers three charges: 2,000 volts for 4.
In trial last month, Judge Newman heard from two expert witnesses for the plaintiffs who testified that execution by firing squad or electrocution could cause a prolonged, painful death. Expert witnesses from the state cast doubt on that assessment, saying death by either method was rapid.The judge also heard from Colie Rushton, a corrections official who developed the state’s protocol for death by firing squad.
Execution by firing squad, she said, is “a reversion to a historic method of execution that has never before been used by our State and is not used in the overwhelming majority of other states.” She added that electrocution is “at a minimum, no longer viewed as a reliable method of administering a painless death, and the underlying assumptions upon which the electric chair is based, dating back to the 1800s, have since been disproven.
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