South Carolina will be able to carry out the death penalty by firing squad

The Supreme Court of South Carolina ruled on Wednesday that the death penalty is legal and the procedures for carrying it out include firing squad, injection and the electric chair.

The decision of the state high court authorizes the resumption of executions after more than a decade.

All five judges agreed with at least part of the sentence, but two of them said they considered it The firing squad was not a legal way to kill a prisoner. and one of them thought that the electric chair was a cruel and unusual punishment.

The decision will also allow a law passed in May 2021 to come into force, which aimed to find alternatives to lethal injections in the face of a shortage of these drugs due to pharmaceutical companies’ refusal to allow them to be used in executions.

The law also sought to make death row inmates in South Carolina could choose between the electric chair, lethal injection or the firing squad to be executed.

Republican Governor Henry McMaster said in a statement that the state’s highest court “has legitimately upheld” the rule of law of the legislation.

“This decision is another step toward ensuring that legal sentences can be properly carried out and that the families and loved ones of the victims receive the closure and justice they have long sought,” McMaster added.

The case reached the South Carolina Supreme Court following a lawsuit by four death row inmates who challenged execution by firing squad or the electric chair, arguing that it violated the prohibition on inflicting cruel punishments.

Justice John Few wrote in the majority opinion that the choice between these three options “cannot be considered cruel because the condemned prisoner may choose to have the State employ the method that he and his attorneys believe will cause him the least pain.”

In the nearly 100-page opinion, he said the changes to state law are a “sincere effort by the General Assembly to make the death penalty less inhumane” while allowing the state to fulfill its duties as required by law.

For his part, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina, Jace Woodrum, He criticized the ruling, saying that “execution is a costly and ineffective form of cruel and unusual punishment that not only does not make us safer, but raises the possibility that the state will kill innocent people in our name.”

In United States, 27 states allow the death penalty, But only seven have executed prisoners in the past three years, as lawyers and advocates argue over excessive pain, proper procedures and the legality of new methods such as nitrogen gas asphyxiation or firing squads that have rarely been used outside the military.

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