South Carolina wants to resume executions with firing squad and electric chair, says "instantaneous or painless" death not mandated
South Carolina says all three execution methods allowed in the state — electrocution, lethal injection, and now, firing squad — fit existing protocols.
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In the balance are the death sentences of 33 inmates who are on South Carolina's death row. While there hasn't been a formal moratorium, the state hasn't performed an execution in nearly 13 years after the drugs it used for lethal injection expired and companies refused to sell more to prison officials unless they could hide their identities from the public.
A nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs has led other U.S. states to add new execution methods to their death penalty protocols. Alabama just executed one condemned inmate by nitrogen hypoxia, a method that it authorized in the wake of a string of botched lethal injections that two death row prisoners survived. The controversial method had never been tested before inside the death chamber when Alabama used it to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith last month, but it is one of three states, along with Oklahoma and Mississippi, that technically allows executions via asphyxiation by nitrogen gas.
It is a rather odd way to phrase it: "A nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs." It makes it sound like there's this huge rush on lethal injection drugs.
South Carolina says all three execution methods allowed in the state — electrocution, lethal injection, and now, firing squad — fit existing protocols. "Courts have never held the death has to be instantaneous or painless," wrote Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for Gov. Henry McMaster's office.
I suppose I would pick firing squad, if I had to pick between the three of them. It seems simple and quick enough.
Still, if the Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment, then doesn't that preclude the use of any punishments which aren't instantaneous or painless? South Carolina officials appear to take a contrary view.