South Carolina Supreme Court rules on legality of state's death penalty

South Carolina's Supreme Court recently announced a controversial decision about the state's death penalty:

According to TheHill.com, "the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that death by firing squad and other forms of execution commonly held to be cruel and unusual are legal in the state if the inmate requests the method of execution."

The ruling is a follow-up to the state's decision to pass a law in 2021 that allowed death row inmates to be killed via alternative execution methods than lethal injection in response to a shortage of lethal injection drugs and a rise in mistakes during injection executions.

Electrocution essentially became the default death penalty method in the state as a result of the law.

Death row inmates sued the state of the change, but the court sided with state prosecutors.

There have been zero executions in South Carolina since 2011, despite there being 32 inmates currently on death row in the state.

Critics of the law allege that electrocution is an inhumane way to go, but Justice John Few didn't see it like that.

He called the move a "sincere effort to make the death penalty less inhumane while enabling the state to carry out its laws."

"The inescapable reality that an execution by any method may not go as planned — that it will be ‘botched’ — does not render the method ‘cruel’ under the constitution," Judge Few said.

Only three firing squad deaths have taken place in America since 1976, and all of those instances happened in Utah, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, spoke on the court's decision shortly after it was handed down:

"The Supreme Court has rightfully upheld the rule of law," the governor said. "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."

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