South Carolina Moves To Allow Execution By Firing Squad, Making It Latest State To Look For Alternatives To Lethal Injection - Forbes

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Topline

South Carolina is on its way to reinstating execution by firing squad, joining other states that have sought alternate means of executing prisoners due to a shortage of the drugs used for lethal injections, which has been the preferred method in the United States since 1976 due to the belief that it’s more humane.

Key Facts

South Carolina’s House of Representatives voted Wednesday to force inmates to die by the electric chair or firing squad when lethal injections are unavailable, and it’s likely the bill will end up on Gov. Henry McMaster’s (R-S.C.) desk sometime next week.

South Carolina hasn’t executed an inmate in 10 years because the state government’s been unable to buy the drugs necessary for lethal injections.

Three states—Oklahoma, Mississippi and Utah—give inmates on death row the option to die by firing squad, or utilize firing squads if other methods of execution (like lethal injection or electrocution) are unavailable.

After the European Union embargoed the drugs necessary to make lethal injections in 2015, Alabama passed a law to use the electric chair, and Oklahoma authorized the use of nitrogen gas to asphyxiate inmates.

The search for “humane” ways of killing inmates hasn’t been simple; Arizona ended hangings in 1930 when a woman was decapitated, and the state banned gas chambers in 1992 when witnesses to an execution described a “gruesome scene.”

A firing squad was last used in 2010 in Utah to execute Ronnie Lee Gardner, who told his lawyer he chose that option because it was easier and there was no chance of a mistake.

Key Background

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976, ruling it doesn’t violate the Eighth Amendment but that some executions could be “cruel and unusual.” Over 1,500 inmates have been executed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court ruling, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and 27 states allow the death penalty as a criminal sentence. Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr announced in 2019 the government would resume federal executions for the first time since 2003, and changed the guidelines in November to allow use of electrocution and firing squads if lethal injection drugs are unavailable. While most executions were carried out by hangings in the early years of the U.S., states began adopting electrocution in 1915 based on the belief that it was less painful than hanging. But several grisly malfunctions led to a shift to lethal injections as a more humane alternative.

Big Number

37. That’s how many inmates sit on death row in South Carolina and could be subject to execution by firing squad.

Chief Critic

Democratic South Carolina House Rep. Justin Bamberg criticized the move and questioned why the state would “move toward the firing squad when they also do that in North Korea?” Bamberg also said those supporting the firing squad measure support laws “about life”—meaning laws limiting abortion—but are “taking up a bill that’s not about life, that doesn’t cater to the ‘belief system’ in our state that its a state of life. This is about death.”