New law makes inmates choose electric chair or firing squad

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has signed into law a bill that forces death row inmates for now to choose between the electric chair or a newly formed firing squad in hopes the state can restart executions after an involuntary 10-year pause.

Two inmates who have exhausted their appeals immediately sued, saying they can’t be electrocuted or shot since they were sentenced under a prior law that made lethal injection the default execution method.

South Carolina had been one of the most prolific states of its size in putting inmates to death. But a lack of lethal injection drugs brought executions to a halt.

McMaster signed the bill Friday with no ceremony or fanfare, according to the state Legislature’s website. It’s the first bill the governor decided to deal with after nearly 50 hit his desk Thursday.

“The families and loved ones of victims are owed closure and justice by law. Now, we can provide it,” McMaster said on Twitter on Monday.

Last week state lawmakers gave their final sign offs to the bill, which retains lethal injection as the primary method of execution if the state has the drugs, but requires prison officials to use the electric chair or firing squad if it doesn’t.

Prosecutors said three inmates have exhausted all their normal appeals, but can’t be killed because under the previous law, inmates who don’t choose the state’s 109-year-old electric chair automatically are scheduled to die by lethal injection. They have all chosen the method that can’t be carried out.

How soon executions can begin is up in the air. The electric chair is ready to use. Prison officials have been doing preliminary research into how firing squads carry out executions in other states, but are not sure how long it will take to have one in place in South Carolina. The other three states that allow a firing squad are Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Three inmates, all in Utah, have been killed by firing squad since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Nineteen inmates have died in the electric chair this century, and South Carolina is one of eight states that can still electrocute inmates, according to the center.

“These are execution methods that previously were replaced by lethal injection, which is considered more humane, and it makes South Carolina the only state going back to the less humane execution methods,” said Lindsey Vann of Justice 360, a nonprofit that represents many of the men on South Carolina’s death row.

Two of the three inmates with no more traditional appeals sued Monday to stop any attempts to make them face the electric chair or a firing squad.

Lawyers for Freddie Owens said he chose lethal injection under the old law and he can’t be resentenced to a different execution method without violating his constitutional rights.

Lawyers for Brad Sigmon made similar arguments. He did not choose between lethal injection and the electric chair and under the old law would have been given lethal injection by default.

Legal arguments by both inmates in state court said the new execution law is “so vague that the process and consequences of the election decision are unclear to a person of ordinary intelligence.”

From 1996 to 2009, South Carolina executed about three inmates a year on average. But a lull in death row inmates reaching the end of their appeals coincided a few years later with pharmaceutical companies refusing to sell states the drugs needed to sedate inmates, relax their muscles and stop their hearts.

South Carolina’s last execution took place in May 2011, and its batch of lethal injection drugs expired in 2013.

Supporters of the bill said the death penalty remains legal in South Carolina, and the state owes it to the family of the victims to find a way to carry out the punishment.

Opponents brought up the case of 14-year-old George Stinney, who South Carolina sent to the electric chair in 1944 after a one-day trial in the deaths of two white girls. He was the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th century. A judge threw out the Black teen’s conviction in 2014.

Stinney’s case is a reminder the death penalty in South Carolina has always been “racist, arbitrary, and error-prone” and continues to be, said Frank Knaack, executive director of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“In the midst of a national reckoning around systemic racism, our Governor ensured that South Carolina’s death penalty — a system rooted in racial terror and lynchings — is maintained,” Knaack said in a statement.

Nineteen of the 37 inmates currently on the state’s death row are Black.

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Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.

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Michelle Liu contributed to this report.

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An earlier version of this report incorrectly said South Carolina’s last execution took place in May 2010, instead of May 2011.