South Carolina makes death row inmates choose electric chair or firing squad
- New law gives inmates a choice amid a lack of lethal-injection drugs
- South Carolina has not executed any inmates in a decade
The US state of South Carolina has introduced a law requiring death row prisoners to choose between firing squad and electric chair after a lack of lethal injection drugs halted executions for a decade.
“This weekend, I signed legislation into law that will allow the state to carry out a death sentence. The families and loved ones of victims are owed closure and justice by law. Now, we can provide it,” Governor Henry McMaster said on Twitter.
The pro-death penalty Republican wants to resume executions after a 10-year hiatus caused by a shortage of drugs used in lethal injections.
Before the pause, death row inmates would choose between the chair and injection, with the injection being administered if no choice was made.
The new law, signed Friday, makes the electric chair the default option if lethal injection is unavailable, and creates the alternative option of a firing squad.
Local prisoner advocacy group the Incarcerated Outreach Network called the move “appalling, shocking, abhorrent” while the South Carolina branch of the American Civil Liberties Union it was “about finding a new way to restart executions within a racist, arbitrary, and error-prone system.”