South Carolina Supreme Court Halts Executions of Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens

The South Carolina Supreme Court has vacat­ed death war­rants for two death-row pris­on­ers sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed this month, stay­ing their exe­cu­tions until the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC) com­plies with a new­ly enact­ed state law requir­ing that it offer con­demned pris­on­ers the option of being exe­cut­ed by firing squad. 

In sep­a­rate orders issued on June 16, 2021 in the cas­es of Brad Sigmon, who faced a June 18 exe­cu­tion, and Freddie Owens, who was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed June 25, 2021, the court ruled that attempt­ing to exe­cute the men by elec­tro­cu­tion with­out offer­ing them the alter­na­tive of lethal injec­tion or fir­ing squad vio­lat­ed the ​“statu­to­ry right of inmates to elect the man­ner of their exe­cu­tion.” Both orders also direct­ed the court’s clerk ​“not to issue anoth­er exe­cu­tion notice until the State noti­fies the Court that the Department of Corrections, in addi­tion to main­tain­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of elec­tro­cu­tion, has devel­oped and imple­ment­ed appro­pri­ate pro­to­cols and poli­cies to car­ry out exe­cu­tions by firing squad.”

The stays marked the sec­ond time this year the court had halt­ed Sigmon’s and Owens’s exe­cu­tions because of the state’s inabil­i­ty to law­ful­ly car­ry them out. On February 4, the court vacat­ed an exe­cu­tion notice sched­ul­ing Sigmon’s exe­cu­tion for February 12, find­ing that ​“the exe­cu­tion is cur­rent­ly impos­si­ble” because South Carolina had no lethal injec­tion drugs on hand. It then direct­ed the clerk ​“not to issue anoth­er exe­cu­tion notice in this case until the State noti­fies this Court that the Department of Corrections has the abil­i­ty to car­ry out the exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion, that the peti­tion­er has made an elec­tion to be elec­tro­cut­ed, or that there has been some change in the law which will allow the exe­cu­tion to take place.” On May 4, the court stayed Owens’s sched­uled May 14 exe­cu­tion on similar grounds. 

The new law enact­ed in May in response to the SCDOC’s inabil­i­ty to obtain exe­cu­tion drugs, changed South Carolina’s default method of exe­cu­tion from lethal injec­tion to the elec­tric chair and direct­ed death-row pris­on­ers to choose elec­tro­cu­tion, fir­ing squad, or lethal drugs, if avail­able, as the means of their death. If the pris­on­er did not make a selec­tion, the law man­dat­ed exe­cu­tion by electric chair.

If the exe­cu­tions had been per­mit­ted to pro­ceed, they would have been the first in South Carolina in more than a decade and the state’s first forced exe­cu­tion by elec­tro­cu­tion in more than twenty years.

Shortly after the new law passed, South Carolina noti­fied the Court that the law had changed and the exe­cu­tions could move for­ward. However, after Sigmon filed the motion to stay his exe­cu­tion, SCDOC sub­mit­ted an affi­davit to the court ​“cer­ti­fy­ing that, as of June 3, 2021, the only statu­to­ri­ly approved method of exe­cu­tion avail­able in South Carolina is elec­tro­cu­tion.” It sub­mit­ted a sim­i­lar cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in response to Owens’s stay motion, as of June 11.

In response to ques­tions from the clerk, the SCDOC direc­tor respond­ed that lethal injec­tion was ​“unavail­able due to cir­cum­stances out­side of the con­trol of the Department of Corrections, and fir­ing squad is cur­rent­ly unavail­able due to the Department of Corrections hav­ing yet to com­plete its devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of nec­es­sary pro­to­cols and policies.”

Lawyers for Sigmon and Owens also asked a fed­er­al court to issue a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order to stop their exe­cu­tions. In a com­plaint filed in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, the pris­on­ers argued that exe­cu­tion by elec­tric chair vio­lates the Constitution’s pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. Death by elec­tro­cu­tion, they wrote, would cause ​“a sub­stan­tial risk of excru­ci­at­ing pain, ter­ror and cer­tain bod­i­ly muti­la­tion that con­tra­venes evolv­ing stan­dards of decen­cy, [and] offends basic prin­ci­ples of human dignity.” 

On June 11, 2021, Chief Judge R. Bryan Harwell reject­ed those argu­ments, writ­ing: ​“The sto­ries detail­ing the hor­rors of exe­cu­tions, regard­less of the method, under­score one impor­tant Eighth Amendment prin­ci­ple — the Eighth Amendment does not guar­an­tee a painless death.”