COLOMBIA, SC (AP) – On Tuesday, South Carolina senators added a firing squad to the electric chair as an alternative if the state cannot execute convicted inmates by lethal injection.
The Senate then passed the bill in a key 32-11 vote, with several Democrats joining Republicans in the proposal that would allow South Carolina to resume executions after almost 10 years.
The state cannot sentence anyone to death now because its supply of lethal injectable drugs has expired and it cannot buy more. Currently, inmates can choose between the electric chair and the lethal injection and, since drugs are not available, they choose the method that cannot be done.
The Senate bill maintains lethal injection if the state has the drugs, but requires prison officials to use the electric chair if they don’t. An inmate can choose a firing squad if he prefers.
The House is considering a similar bill without the firing squad option, but it could also consider the Senate version after a procedural vote by senators finalizes the bill later this week.
South Carolina still uses the powered chair for the first time in 1912, after taking over the death penalty for counties, who generally used hanging.
It is just one of nine states that maintains an electric chair. It would only be the fourth state to allow a firing squad with Utah, Oklahoma and Mississippi, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster asked lawmakers to give him any way to resume executions, as some prisoners have exhausted their resources, but their death sentences cannot be carried out.
A Republican and a Democrat, both former prosecutors, proposed adding the firing squad.
The former Democratic prosecutor said it is evident in a Republican-dominated state like South Carolina, where the Republican Party won extra seats in November, that the death penalty cannot be abolished like Virginia last month.
“The death penalty will keep the law here for a while. If he is going to remain, he must be human, “said state senator Dick Harpootlian, who said that hanging is brutal and often leads to beheading and electrocution, convicts” are burned to death “.
Since the last execution in May 2011, death row in South Carolina has dropped from about 60 inmates to 37 because of natural deaths and prisoners who have won appeals and been sentenced to life in prison without parole. Prosecutors have sent only three new prisoners to death row in the past decade.
Former Republican prosecutor Senator Greg Hembree said it was not the time to discuss whether the death penalty was right or wrong.
But several Democrats said the moral aspect of putting someone to death cannot be removed from discussions about the method.
They also asked senators how they could justify a debate over sentencing people to death this week, when last month they passed a bill banning most abortions in South Carolina, which is now in court.
Democratic Senator Kevin Johnson mentioned George Stinney, the youngest executed person in the United States in the 20th century. He was 14 when he was sent to the South Carolina electric chair after a one-day trial in 1944 for killing two white girls. A judge rejected the black teenager’s conviction in 2014. Newspaper reports reported that witnesses said the straps to keep him in the electric chair did not fit his small body.
Johnson passes a memorial to Stinney each time he comes from Manning to Columbia.
“Do you think it was bad to abort a baby? Think about how much worse it is to kill a person who, after all, is innocent, “said Johnson.
Only one senator in the Chamber saw an execution. Hembree, the co-sponsor of the firing squad proposal, tried nearly a dozen death penalty cases as a prosecutor and saw one of the men he sentenced to death die by lethal injection.
“There is nothing pleasant about any of these forms. They are horrible, sad and tragic in a way, “said Hembree.” Justice is not always a happy place. But it is justice. “
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