South Carolina

Timeline

1974 — South Carolina rein­states the death penal­ty fol­low­ing Furman v. Georgia.

2006 — South Carolina gov­er­nor signs bill that allows pros­e­cu­tors to seek the death penal­ty for repeat child abusers.

2011 — Hospira Inc., the sole U.S. man­u­fac­tur­er of sodi­um thiopen­tal, announces that it will no longer man­u­fac­ture the lethal injec­tion drug. South Carolina opts to use pen­to­bar­bi­tal, instead.

2012 — Edward Elmore is released from prison after near­ly 30 years on death row. He agrees to a plea deal in which he main­tains his inno­cence but agrees the state could re-try him for murder.

2012 — Joseph Ard is released from prison after 11 years on death row after new evi­dence was dis­cov­ered that cor­rob­o­rates Mr. Ard’s claim that the shoot­ing death of his preg­nant girl­friend was accidental.

2014 — South Carolina vacates the con­vic­tion of George Stinney, Jr., the youngest per­son exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in the last cen­tu­ry. At 14 years old, Mr. Stinney was con­vict­ed by an all-white jury, after delib­er­at­ing for ten min­utes, and sen­tenced to elec­tro­cu­tion for the killing of two young white girls.

2016 — The death sen­tence of Johnny Bennett, a black defen­dant con­demned by an all-white jury, is vacat­ed due to pros­e­cu­tor Myers’ racist remarks regard­ing Mr. Bennett’s inter­ra­cial sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a white woman. Mr. Myers referred to Mr. Bennett as a ​“mon­ster,” ​“King Kong,” a ​“cave­man,” and a ​“beast of bur­den” in his closing argument.

2021 — The South Carolina leg­is­la­ture autho­rizes the use of the elec­tric chair and fir­ing squad as the state reach­es a decade with­out any execution.

2022 — South Carolina com­pletes prepa­ra­tions to exe­cute the state’s death row pris­on­ers by firing squad.

2022 — Death row pris­on­ers ask the South Carolina Supreme Court to defer set­ting exe­cu­tion dates until the courts resolve pend­ing legal chal­lenges to the state’s con­tro­ver­sial exe­cu­tion meth­ods — notably the state’s autho­riza­tion of exe­cu­tion by firing squad.

2022 — The South Carolina Supreme Court halts two sched­uled exe­cu­tions, includ­ing one that would have been the state’s first exe­cu­tion by fir­ing squad, amid ongo­ing legal chal­lenges by death row pris­on­ers over the state’s execution methods.

2022 — A South Carolina tri­al court issues an injunc­tion pre­vent­ing the state from car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions by fir­ing squad or the elec­tric chair, rul­ing that those meth­ods vio­late the state’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against ​“cru­el, unusu­al, and corporal punishments.”

2023 — South Carolina Supreme Court blocks the state’s efforts to con­ceal infor­ma­tion regard­ing attempts to obtain lethal injection drugs.

2023 — A bill to con­ceal the iden­ti­ties of lethal injec­tion drug sup­pli­ers and exe­cu­tion team mem­bers pass both cham­bers of the South Carolina leg­is­la­ture. Governor Henry McMaster signs the bill just a few months lat­er. Gov. McMaster and South Carolina Department of Corrections issue a joint state­ment inform­ing the pub­lic that the state has obtained lethal injec­tion drugs and is ready to car­ry out executions.

Famous Cases

Brothers Thomas and Meek Griffin, as well as two oth­er Black men, were con­vict­ed in the 1913 mur­der of a Confederate Civil War vet­er­an. The Griffin broth­ers were con­vict­ed based on accu­sa­tions from an indi­vid­ual found to be in pos­ses­sion of the vic­tim’s weapon. He agreed to tes­ti­fy against the Griffin broth­ers in exchange for life in prison. The Griffin broth­ers and their code­fen­dants were arrest­ed, tried, and sen­tenced to death with­in days of the crime, leav­ing their defense attor­neys with an inad­e­quate oppor­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare for tri­al. All men were sen­tenced to death and appealed their con­vic­tions to the state Supreme Court, which ulti­mate­ly denied their claims. More than 100 peo­ple from Chester County, South Carolina peti­tioned then-Governor Richard Manning to com­mute the Griffins’ sen­tences, but they were exe­cut­ed in September 1915. Both Thomas and Meeks Griffin were grant­ed posthu­mous par­dons in October 2009 after Tom Joyner sought out the par­dons of his great-uncles.

14-year-old George Stinney and his younger sis­ter, Aime, were play­ing out­side when two white girls approached them, ask­ing where they could find a par­tic­u­lar flower. Neither Mr. Stinney nor his sis­ter knew where the young girls could find these flow­ers and they quick­ly moved along. That evening, when both young girls failed to return home, a search par­ty was sent to find them. Mr. Stinney and his fam­i­ly joined the search par­ty, and he men­tioned to anoth­er searcher that he had seen the girls ear­li­er in the day; he was lat­er arrest­ed and charged with their mur­ders. According to police, Mr. Stinney con­fessed to blud­geon­ing both girls to death despite the absence of any phys­i­cal evi­dence con­nect­ing him to the crime. Mr. Stinney was charged with cap­i­tal mur­der and rape, tried, con­vict­ed, and exe­cut­ed in South Carolina’s elec­tric chair in just under three months, on June 16, 1944.

In October 2013, attor­neys for the Stinney fam­i­ly filed a peti­tion ask­ing the court to over­turn the guilty ver­dict. Just three months lat­er, Sumter County Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen held a two-day evi­den­tiary hear­ing to deter­mine whether Mr. Stinney received a fair tri­al. In December 2014, Judge Mullen for­mal­ly vacat­ed Mr. Stinney’s cap­i­tal con­vic­tion, deter­min­ing that he was deprived of due process through­out his trial.

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.

Notable Exonerations

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.

Milestones in Abolition/​Reinstatement

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.

South Carolina Executions in the 20^th Century (by Offense and Race)

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 20^th cen­tu­ry. Three-quar­ters of those exe­cut­ed for mur­der in the 20^th 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 20^th 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.

* 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.

Resources

• South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
• Department of Corrections
• South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense
• South Carolina Victim Assistance Network

South Carolina Execution Totals Since 1976