SC on verge of passing electric chair, firing squad bill to restart executions

Emily Bohatch
·3 min read

A bill that would bring back the electric chair and introduce the firing squad as methods of execution in South Carolina is headed to the House floor, its last true hurdle before becoming law.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 13 to nine Tuesday to advance the bill, a vote that was expected since the committee had already advanced a similar bill.

Gov. Henry McMaster has said he will sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.

The bill’s supporters say it will give the state a way to perform executions during a nationwide shortage of the drugs needed to administer a lethal injection. South Carolina has not had the necessary drugs to perform executions since about 2016, resulting in multiple postponed executions, according to Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling.

Under South Carolina law, death row inmates have the ability to choose their method of execution: the current options being lethal injection or electrocution. Once inmates choose a method, the state cannot force them to die by a different method. Inmates who have chosen to die by lethal injection cannot be executed in the state at this time.

The bill would allow executions to resume in the state because it would make the electric chair the default method of execution. Under the legislation, inmates would be given the choice between the electric chair, the firing squad or lethal injection, but if drugs for an injection are not available, the inmate would be forced to choose between the other two methods of execution.

While Republicans pushed for the bill’s passage so executions could resume, Democrats called them hypocritical for advocating for death via electrocution or firing squad months after pushing to “protect life” during the debate over the “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban bill.

“That is what we’re voting to subject people to in a state that passed the heartbeat bill,” S.C. Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg, said during Tuesday’s hearing.

Bamberg pointed out that three executions have been postponed due to the shortage of lethal injection drugs. Once the bill is signed into law, the state will be able to carry out electrocutions immediately.

“If you vote for this, you’re voting to kill at least three people,” Bamberg said.

Bamberg added that the bill would also apply to people who were sentenced before its passage. If offenders knew they could be electrocuted or put to death via firing squad when they went to trial, they may have chosen to plea to a lesser deal or try a different defense strategy, Bamberg said.

“They made their decision at trial knowing that’s what the law was,” Bamberg said.

Bamberg introduced an amendment that would solve that problem by stopping the bill from being retroactively applied to inmates already on death row. The amendment was voted down.

The Bamberg Democrat also tried to introduce a number of poison pill amendments, some of which would bring back hanging and the guillotine. Those were all voted down as well.

In one last plea to their colleagues before voting, opponents of the bill reminded its advocates that its not unheard of for people to be wrongly convicted and placed on death row. Rep. Neal Collins, R-Pickens, listed several cases of death row inmates in South Carolina later being released after their convictions were overturned.

“We have been wrong at least three times and probably seven times within my life time,” Collins said.

“The system is not perfect and it’s arbitrary,” Collins added.

After the bill was advanced, the ACLU of South Carolina issued a statement condemning the move.

“South Carolina’s death penalty is racist, arbitrary, and error-prone,” said Frank Knaack, executive director of the ACLU of South Carolina, in a statement. “Today the Committee ignored these realities and moved South Carolina one step closer to resurrecting the electric chair as the state’s default method of execution. It is unconscionable.”

Now that the bill passed the House Judiciary Committee, it will go to the House floor, where it is expected to be debated next week.

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