State And Federal Info
Serial killer Donald Henry “Pee Wee” Gaskins, Jr., who grew up in an extremely violent household, attempted his first murder at the age of 13. He claimed to have killed many other people, but law enforcement authorities could not verify all those claims. In his autobiography, Gaskins said he had “a special mind” that gave him “permission to kill.” (Wikipedia). He was executed in the electric chair in 1991.
Susan Smith was convicted of murdering her two young sons by restraining them in their car seats and driving the car into a lake. She initially claimed that two African-American men had kidnapped her sons, but soon admitted to their murder. She was represented by prominent death penalty attorneys, who brought out facts about abuse she had suffered from her stepfather. Although the state asked for the death penalty, jurors returned a verdict of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Michael Linder was sentenced to death in 1975 for killing a highway patrol officer. He was later found to have killed the officer in self defense and was acquitted in 1981.
Warren Douglas Manning was convicted in 1989 of murdering a police officer. The conviction relied entirely on circumstantial evidence, and Manning was acquitted in 1999.
Herbert Fielding introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty during every legislative session he spent in the South Carolina legislature. None of the bills passed either chamber, but during his tenure (1970-1973 and 1983-1992) the bills kept the issue alive in the minds of South Carolina legislators.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, bills to expand the use of the death penalty were introduced during nearly every legislative session, but were not passed. In 2021, after the state reached ten years without an execution because of the Department of Corrections’ inability to obtain lethal injection drugs, the state legislature passed a bill to allow executions by electric chair or firing squad, making the electric chair the default method of execution.
Historical data on executions in South Carolina reflects the state’s centuries-long discriminatory application of the death penalty against African Americans. Black men, women, and children comprised 78.5% of the people executed in South Carolina in the 20th century. Three-quarters of those executed for murder in the 20th century were people of color, and 74.5% were Black.
When it came to offenses in which no one died, the link between executions and lynchings in South Carolina is undeniable. Black men accused of sexual indiscretions with white women were frequent victims of lynching. For most of the 20th century, South Carolina permitted the death penalty for rape and attempted rape but employed it almost exclusively against Black men. 92.4% of those executed for rape or attempted rape were Black. 87.8% of those executed for rape were Black, and only Black men or boys were executed for attempted rape.
| Decade | Total Executions | Murder | Rape | Attempted Rape | ||||||||
| W | B | All | W | B | All | W | B | All | W | B | All | |
| 1900-1909 | 4 | 26 | 30 | 4 | 21 | 25 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1910-1919 | 3 | 49 | 52 | 3 | 31 | 34 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 13 | 13 |
| 1920-1929 | 8 | 28 | 36 | 8 | 23 | 31 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| 1930-1939 | 18 | 50 | 68 | 18 | 44 | 62 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 1940-1949 | 9 | 50 | 59 | 5* | 30 | 35 | 4 | 12 | 16 | 0 | 8 | 8 |
| 1950-1959 | 5 | 20 | 25 | 5 | 16 | 21 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1960-1969 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 1970-1979 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1980-1989 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1990-1999 | 13 | 9 | 22 | 12 | 9 | 22^ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 65 | 237 | 302 | 55 | 176 | 236 | 5 | 36 | 41 | 0 | 25 | 25 |
* Includes 2 white men and 1 white woman who were executed in 1943 for conspiracy to commit murder.
^Includes 1 Native American man who was executed in 1999.
Sources: For executions between 1900 and 1972 — Executions in the U.S. 1608-2002: The ESPY File, Executions by State. For executions between 1972 and 1999 — Death Penalty Information Center, Execution Database.
Lethal Injection
Sep 21, 2023
On September 19th, 2023, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster and the South Carolina Department of Corrections issued a joint statement informing the public that the state is “now prepared” to carry out lethal injection executions, as…
Secrecy
Apr 28, 2023
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 d…
Arbitrariness
Apr 14, 2023
The following law review articles by several key death penalty researchers were recently published in 107 Cornell Law Review, No. 6, September, 2022. They cover a variety of issues, such as the interplay between race and capital punishment, the hi…
Methods of Execution
Feb 09, 2023
On January 26, South Carolina’s Supreme Court ordered the state to turn over information about its attempts to obtain lethal injection drugs, as part of a suit challenging aspects of the state’s methods of execution. South Carolina has …
Executions Overview
Oct 11, 2022
The South Carolina Supreme Court will hear argument one month sooner on the state’s appeal of a trial court ruling that declared two of its statutorily methods of execution — death by electric chair and firing squad — unconstituti…
Executions Overview
Sep 09, 2022
A South Carolina trial court has issued an injunction preventing the state from carrying out executions using a firing squad or the electric chair, ruling that those methods violate the state’s constitutional prohibition against “…
Executions Overview
Aug 18, 2022
A decision on the constitutionality of South Carolina’s newly adopted execution methods now rests in the hands a trial court judge after lawyers for death-row prisoners and the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) prese…
Arbitrariness
Aug 04, 2022
As the trial challenging South Carolina’s execution methods began on Augu…
Mental Illness
Jul 28, 2022
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has overturned a South Carolina death-row prisoner’s death sentence after finding that the sentencing judge in his case had ignored uncontested evidence of the defendant’s …
Secrecy
May 20, 2022
After 37 years of silence, a South Carolina prison doctor who was in the execution chamber when eight prisoners it was his duty to treat were put to death has for the first time publicly discussed his conflicting roles. I…
