South Carolina green lights firing-squad executions after death chamber renovations

State law gives inmates option to choose firing squad over electric chair following lethal drug shortage

South Carolina will allow inmates on death row the option of a firing-squad execution following the completion of renovations to the state’s death chamber.

The method of execution was codified into state law last year to end a decade-long pause in carrying out death sentences because of the state’s inability to procure lethal injection drugs.

The state Corrections Department announced the completion of renovations to the death chamber in the state capital Columbia on Friday. The total cost was $53,600.

The agency has also notified Attorney General Alan Wilson that it is now able to carry out a firing-squad execution.

The death chamber now includes a metal chair, with restraints, in the corner of the room in which inmates will sit if they choose execution by firing squad.

That chair faces a wall with a rectangular opening, 15 feet away, through which three shooters — volunteer employees of the Corrections Department — will fire their weapons.

Each will have a rifle loaded with live ammunition trained on the inmate’s heart.

The inmate will have a hood placed over their head and will be given the opportunity to make a final statement.

State law was amended in 2021 as a way of getting around the shortage of lethal injection drugs. In May the electric chair was made the primary method of execution, with the additional options to the inmate of firing squad or lethal injection if available.

Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, a prosecutor-turned-criminal-defense lawyer, introduced the firing squad option, arguing it is “the least painful” execution method available.

Reasoning that the death penalty would be state law for some time to come, he argued that it “ought to be humane”.

A month after the legislation was passed, South Carolina’s Supreme Court blocked the executions of two inmates by electric chair, Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens, until they are able to exercise the choice of the firing squad option.

As the executions were scheduled so soon after the passing of the legislation, no firing squad had been formed and lethal injection drugs were still unavailable, leaving the electric chair as the only option.

Now that a firing squad has been formed, the court will need to issue a new order for any execution to be carried out.

South Carolina is one of eight states to still use the electric chair and one of four to allow a firing squad, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

The state’s last execution took place in 2011, and its batch of lethal injection drugs expired two years later. There are 37 men on the state’s death row.

With reporting by The Associated Press