July 31 (UPI) — The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the state could give death row inmates the choice of ending their lives via a firing squad or electric chair.
By giving inmates a choice, the court said, the options should not be considered cruel or unusual, thereby allowing the executions to take place.
The state legislature approved such options in 2021 after the Department of Corrections could no longer obtain the drugs needed to carry out lethal injection executions. Death penalty opponents immediately tied up the law in court.
“In the context of the constitutional principle that our state may carry out the death penalty on those on whom it has been lawfully imposed, the choice cannot be considered cruel because the condemned inmate may elect to have the state employ the method he or his lawyers believe will cause him the least pain,” Justice John Cannon Few wrote in the majority opinion.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster applauded the decision.
“The Supreme Court has rightly upheld the rule of law,” he said in a statement. “This decision is another step in ensuring that lawful sentences can be duly enforced and the families and loved ones of the victims receive the closure and justice they have long awaited.”
Four South Carolina death row inmates sued to challenge the law, charging that the state forcing them to pick between the choice was cruel and unusual punishment. A South Carolina circuit court initially agreed, saying the measure violated the prohibition on the infliction of cruel, corporeal, or unusual punishment, ruling it unconstitutional.
The state later said it was able to secure the lethal injection drugs in 2022 after the state legislature passed a “shield statute” to hide the name of the drugs’ providers.
Following the decision on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina urged lawmakers to wholly ban the practice of execution, stating it “has no place in our society or under our Constitution.”
“Execution is a costly, ineffective form of cruel and unusual punishment that not only fails to make us safer but raises the possibility of the state killing innocent people in our name,” ACLU-SC Executive Director Jace Woodrum said in a statement.
According to state records, South Carolina has 32 death row inmates.
The last time it executed a death sentence was in 2011, a tally from the Death Penalty Information Center shows.
