COLOMBIA, SC – South Carolina senators voted Tuesday to bring the firing squad back as a method of execution, providing a second alternative if the state is unable to execute convicted prisoners by lethal injection.
The bipartisan measure was proposed as an amendment to an enforcement law bill that would make the electric chair the standard method of enforcement amid national shortages of lethal injectable drugs, the state said.
The Senate’s approval of the bill in a 32-11 vote essentially ends a forced 10-year moratorium on executions due to a lack of supplies, the Associated Press reported.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization, South Carolina is one of 28 states where the death penalty remains legal.
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Current South Carolina law gives convicted inmates the choice between lethal injection and electrocution death, but it cannot force them to die in the electric chair. In turn, executions of prisoners who refused the option of electrocution have so far been indefinitely postponed while the state awaits the drug cocktails necessary for successful lethal injections, the state reported.
Meanwhile, the South Carolina House is considering a similar bill that does not include firing squads, but the House may also consider the Senate version after a procedural vote by Senators finalizes the bill later this week, the report said. AP.
Proponents of the Senate measure argued that the move would bring closure to the victims’ families, some of whom have waited years for the execution of death sentences in South Carolina, The Washington Post reported.
“For many years, as most of you know, South Carolina has not been able to carry out executions,” said state senator Greg Hembree, R-Horry, one of the bill’s Republican co-sponsors, in the Senate floor. . “Families are waiting, victims are waiting, the state is waiting.”
However, Democratic lawmakers have argued that racial disparities affect the application of death sentences in the state, where about 27% of the population is black, but almost half of the current 37 death row inmates in South Carolina are black, the report said. Post.
“My question is if we adopt this, do we have the same kind of pattern in which African Americans on death row receive it more often than others?” Senator Karl Allen, D-Greenville, asked in the Senate floor.
According to the AP, the population on death row in South Carolina has decreased from about 60 inmates to just 37 since the last execution carried out in May 2011 because of natural deaths and prisoners who won appeals and were sentenced to life in prison. without parole.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Governor Henry McMaster’s office told the state that the governor supports changing the law to allow executions to be carried out using any “reasonable” and constitutional method, including a firing squad.