South Carolina Legislature Authorizes Use of Electric Chair and Firing Squad as State Reaches 10 Years Without an Execution

One day shy of the tenth anniver­sary of the state’s last exe­cu­tion, the South Carolina leg­is­la­ture, frus­trat­ed by the state’s inabil­i­ty to obtain exe­cu­tion drugs, approved a bill that would autho­rize putting pris­on­ers to death in the elec­tric chair or by firing squad. 

On May 5, 2021, the South Carolina House of Representatives vot­ed 66 – 43 to approve Senate Bill 200, bring­ing the bill clos­er to final pas­sage. The State Senate passed an ear­li­er ver­sion of the bill on March 2 by a vote of 32 – 11. The bill now returns to the Senate for rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the House amend­ments before it can be sent to Gov. Henry McMaster to be signed into law.

The legislature’s action comes near­ly ten years to the day after South Carolina car­ried out its last exe­cu­tion on May 6, 2011. The state is the 13^th that cur­rent­ly autho­rizes cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment but has not exe­cut­ed any­one for more than a decade. Thirty-six U.S. states — near­ly three-quar­ters (72%) of the nation — have now either abol­ished the death penal­ty or had no exe­cu­tions in at least ten years.

South Carolina law pro­vides for exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion, but the state’s sup­ply of exe­cu­tion drugs expired in 2013. Since then, U.S. phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers have refused to sell their med­i­cines to states for use in exe­cu­tions and South Carolina cor­rec­tions offi­cials have been unable to pro­cure a new sup­ply. Falsely attribut­ing the com­pa­nies’ refusals to intim­i­da­tion and threats by anti-death-penal­ty activists, Gov. Henry McMaster has lob­bied the leg­is­la­ture to autho­rize using the elec­tric chair if lethal-injec­tion drugs are unavail­able. Legislators amend­ed the bill to add the fir­ing squad as a sec­ond alter­na­tive execution method.

In November 2020, South Carolina issued a death war­rant for Richard Moore, set­ting an exe­cu­tion date of December 4, 2020. Corrections offi­cials pro­vid­ed no infor­ma­tion to Moore about how the state intend­ed to per­form the exe­cu­tion. His lawyers asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to stay the exe­cu­tion, writ­ing, ​“Never before has [the South Carolina Department of Corrections] denied a con­demned inmate and his coun­sel access to the exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols in advance of an immi­nent exe­cu­tion. Indeed, no oth­er state in the coun­try has exe­cut­ed some­one under such an extreme veil of secre­cy.” The South Carolina Supreme Court stayed the exe­cu­tion, stat­ing that it had ​“been advised the South Carolina Department of Corrections does not have, and will not be able to obtain, the drugs required for exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion.” It direct­ed that the stay remain in effect ​“until the South Carolina Department of Corrections advis­es the Court it has the abil­i­ty to per­form the exe­cu­tion as required by the law.”

SB 200 would make elec­tro­cu­tion the default method of exe­cu­tion, and allow pris­on­ers to elect exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion, if avail­able, or fir­ing squad. Gov. Henry McMaster has said he sup­ports it. A 2015 nation­al poll by YouGov found that most Americans oppose exe­cu­tion meth­ods oth­er than lethal injec­tion. Just one-third of respon­dents said the elec­tric chair and the fir­ing squad were not cru­el and unusual. 

Legislators from both par­ties crit­i­cized the bill, point­ing to the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple. Representative Neal Collins (R – Pickens), raised con­cerns about wrong­ful con­vic­tions. ​“We have been wrong at least three times and prob­a­bly sev­en times with­in my life­time,” Collins said. ​“The sys­tem is not per­fect and it’s arbi­trary.” Senator Kevin L. Johnson (D – Clarendon) invoked the exe­cu­tion of George Stinney, Jr., a Black 14-year-old boy who was con­vict­ed by an all-white jury of killing two white girls. Stinney, who wept as white prison guards strapped him into the elec­tric chair and placed the elec­tro­cu­tion hel­met on his head and a bit in his mouth, was the youngest per­son exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in the 20^th cen­tu­ry. His con­vic­tion was posthu­mous­ly vacat­ed in 2014, 70 years after his exe­cu­tion. His case came to sym­bol­ize the racist mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S.

Frank Knack, Executive Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina, sharply crit­i­cized the legislature’s attempt to ​“reform” the death penal­ty by mak­ing it eas­i­er for the state to exe­cute pris­on­ers. ​“We watched the debate around the elec­tric chair bill yes­ter­day and it seemed like it was tak­ing place in some alter­na­tive uni­verse where we have a jus­tice sys­tem that is fair,” Knack said. ​“This lofty imposed pun­ish­ment is based in a sys­tem that is racist, arbi­trary and error-prone.” 

“South Carolina’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment evolved from lynch­ings and racial ter­ror, and it has failed to sep­a­rate its mod­ern cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem from this racist his­to­ry,” the ACLU of South Carolina said in a state­ment. ​“The death penal­ty is modern-day lynching.”

A DPIC analy­sis of exe­cu­tions in South Carolina in the 20^th cen­tu­ry found stark racial dis­par­i­ties. Of the 302 peo­ple exe­cut­ed in the last cen­tu­ry, 237 (78%) were Black. Of the 41 peo­ple exe­cut­ed for rape, 36 (88%) were Black. All 25 peo­ple exe­cut­ed for attempt­ed rape were Black men.