South Carolina Advances Legislation to Keep Execution Details Secret

Bills to hide the iden­ti­ties of lethal-injec­tion drug sup­pli­ers and exe­cu­tion team mem­bers from the pub­lic have passed both cham­bers of the South Carolina leg­is­la­ture. The bills face a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process before one can move to the governor’s desk for sig­na­ture. Proponents of the law say it is nec­es­sary because reveal­ing such infor­ma­tion might make exe­cu­tions dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble. South Carolina has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in 12 years. Opponents say the pub­lic has the right to know about government actions.

In 2021, in response to the state’s fail­ure to obtain lethal-injec­tion drugs, the leg­is­la­ture passed a law mak­ing the elec­tric chair the default method of exe­cu­tion if such drugs were unavail­able, and allow­ing an option to select the fir­ing squad instead. Four death-row pris­on­ers chal­lenged those meth­ods as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el and unusu­al. The ini­tial court to review the mat­ter found that these meth­ods were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under state law. In 2022, the South Carolina Supreme Court halt­ed exe­cu­tions while it con­sid­ered an appeal of that rul­ing. As part of that lit­i­ga­tion, the court ordered the state in February 2023 to dis­close what efforts it had made to obtain lethal-injection drugs.

Rep. Justin Bamberg (D – Smoaks) opposed the bill because he said the leg­is­la­ture could wait on the court deci­sion or seek oth­er ways to obtain exe­cu­tion drugs. ​“This is the com­plete oppo­site of honesty…we can find an expe­di­ent solu­tion to a seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able prob­lem that does have a solu­tion,” he said. ​“We just haven’t done the work to find it.”

The bill passed the Senate 39 – 5 on February 22, 2023, and an amend­ed ver­sion passed the House 80 – 22 on April 20. 

DPIC has pub­lished a report on the grow­ing prac­tice of states’ hid­ing the facts about exe­cu­tions through secre­cy laws: ​“Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States” (2018).