South Carolina is now able to execute inmates on death row via firing squad, the South Carolina Department of Corrections announced on Friday.
A death chamber at the state’s Capital Punishment Facility has been renovated to accommodate a firing squad should the inmate select that means of execution, according to a news release.
The chamber includes a chair with metal restraints where the inmate will sit, in the corner of the chamber away from the existing electric chair. The chamber has also been retrofitted with bullet-resistant glass.
Last year, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill that declared the electric chair as the state’s primary means of execution but lets inmates decide to die by firing squad or lethal injection if those options are available.
South Carolina made the change amid ongoing problems across the country with sourcing and administering the drugs used for lethal injections — usually a cocktail of potassium chloride to stop the heart, pancuronium bromide to cause paralysis and midazolam for sedation.
The three members of the firing squad will be volunteers, the news release states. It also detailed the protocols for carrying out an execution: The squad will be situated behind a wall with their rifles, all loaded with live ammunition, pointing through an opening. The squad won’t be visible from the witness room.
The inmate will be led into the room and given the opportunity to make a last statement before being strapped to the chair and hooded. The warden will receive the execution order and the team will fire. A doctor will examine the inmate and declare them dead, and witnesses will be escorted out.
Members of the squad must be SCDC employers who “meet certain qualifications” but the news release does not detail what qualifications they must meet.
South Carolina has 35 inmates on death row. The state last executed an inmate in 2011. There are currently no executions scheduled.
“It’s tragic that a civilized society should eliminate anybody,” state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, one of the sponsors of the firing squad bill, told The State. “But if it has to be done, it should be done as humanely as possible.”
He added that the electric chair burns people alive.
“If you’ve got to do it, this is a better way,” Harpootlian said.
Copyright 2022 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI’s prior written consent.
—-
This content is published through a licensing agreement with Acquire Media using its NewsEdge technology.
Hmmm . . .now let’s move from SC to DC. The inmates are running the asylum there, so . . . .
AND if they keep having problems with the jabs.. HOWS ABOUT JUST sticking folks, with PURE AIR, to cause them to die from embolisms!!
He who lives by the bullet should die by the bullet and have no choice in the matter. If we had a execution video channel so the public could see what is in store for them, with the station profits going to the families of the victims, the criminals might think twice before committing their planned violent mayhem.
OOH.. Pay per view executions.. I like the idea..
If a criminal can rape, murder, dismember their victims and commit any death penalty crime and the bleeding heart fools just want them executed by putting them to sleep. What is the point to having crimes that are punishable by death if death is not a horrible punishment for committing horrible crimes.
The innocent Jesus Christ, son of God, was put to death by being nailed to a cross.
Do these politicians think that these guilty death penalty criminals deserve a better death???
A horrible death is suppose to be a deterrent from committing horrible crimes.
Which is one reason i have often HATED ON THE LEFT, for their constant whining “WE need to be humane about how we execute”, that’s IF THEY EVEN Support executions… MOST don’t…
WHY the hell should WE be humane to them, WHEN THEY ARE ON Death row, because of THEIR inhumanity!!