South Carolina | With Spartanburg man out of appeals, electrocution, firing squad may end execution impasse
The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Tuesday that would let condemned inmates choose death by being shot in the heart by several sharpshooters. That bill has already passed the Senate and Gov. Henry McMaster has said he would sign whatever reaches his desk.
The latest bill heads to the House floor to join another bill that would force death row inmates into the electric chair because South Carolina can no longer obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections.
That lack of drugs has prevented South Carolina from killing an inmate for 10 years. From 2000 to 2010, the state averaged just under two executions a year.
Death row inmates in South Carolina get to decide how they die. They choose lethal injection since it can’t be done. Both bills soon to be on the House floor require the state to use the electric chair if the drugs aren’t available. One just adds the firing squad as another choice, with supporters saying dying from several bullets is more humane than electrocution.
Rep. Justin Bamberg told the other committee members that they were making a grave decision Tuesday since three of South Carolina’s 37 inmates have run out of appeals and would have execution orders issued if the lethal injection drugs were available.
“If you vote for this, you are voting to kill at least 3 people,” said Bamberg, a Democrat from the city of Bamberg.
Bamberg suggested 9 amendments to the bill, which were all rejected. They included making executions public and showing them on the internet, and bringing back hanging or the guillotine. He also proposed creating a committee to study if the death penalty is meted out fairly in the state and another to abolish the death penalty altogether.
Bamberg also shared closeup photos of injuries like burns that inmates suffered during executions and described the sounds in the death chamber,
Rep. Max Hyde brought up 56-year-old death row inmate Richard Moore, who shot and killed a store worker in 1999 after taking the clerk’s gun during a Spartanburg County robbery. Moore was shot in the arm and prosecutors said he left a trail of blood around the store as he looked for cash, stepping twice over the employee’s body.
“I’d like to know how that sounded. Do we have any pictures of that?” said Hyde, a Republican from Spartanburg.
Moore is 1 of the 3 inmates who are out of appeals but can’t be executed. Richard Bernard Moore is on death row awaiting execution for the 1999 killing of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg County.
The committee vote was 13-9 to approve the latest bill. Rep. Neal Collins of Pickens was the only Republican to vote against it, He said he is troubled by former death row inmates later exonerated and that the majority of inmates awaiting a death sentence come from just 4 of the state’s 46 counties.
Supporters of the death penalty spoke little at the hearing outside of pointing out that capital punishment remains legal in South Carolina and lawmakers have an obligation to make sure the state can carry out a lawful sentence.
Bamberg asked conservative lawmakers to at least consider how they passed a law earlier this session that outlawed abortions when a heartbeat can be detected in the womb. He asked if the heartbeats of inmates didn’t count as life and why they thought life without parole wasn’t punishment enough.
“I can think of no greater punishment — outside of going to hell — to serving the rest of your life in the South Carolina Department of Corrections,” Bamberg said.
Source: Associated Press, Staff, April 28, 2021
SC close to allowing execution by firing squad: How would that work?
The bill has already made it through the state Senate and is now on the House floor for debate.
If passed, death row inmates would have a choice to die by the electric chair or by firing squad if the drugs used in lethal injections are unavailable.
Lawmakers say this bill can end South Carolina’s 10-year pause on executions. Under current law, inmates on death row are sentenced to die by lethal injection unless they choose the electric chair. But there is a nationwide shortage of the drugs required for lethal injection.
Of the inmates currently on death row 2 have had their executions stayed, 1 recently received their death order, according to the Department of Corrections.
Here’s how an execution by firing squad would work
University of South Carolina Criminology Professor Hayden Smith said that in the current bill, there are no specifics. He looked at the execution of Gary Gilmore in Salt Lake City in 1977.
“And what they did there is they had 6 police officers who were on the firing squad, 5 of whom had live rounds and 1 had a blank round, and they stood about 20 to 25 feet away from Gary Gilmore and they had small holes in like a curtain,” he said.
The director for the non-profit and non-partisan Death Penalty Information Center, Robert Dunham, said when done properly, the firing squad involves a shot to the heart, which produces almost instantaneous death.
“It may be done differently depending on what state you’re in,” Dunham agreed. He explained said the most recent execution by firing squad was in 2010 in Salt Lake County.
“In Utah, when they carried out the execution, they had 6, 6 sharpshooters who were volunteers who participated in the execution. 5 of them were provided rifles with bullets. One had a blank, and that is because of the psychological impact of knowing that you’re killing a human being,” Dunham said.
He said the inmate is strapped to a chair and would usually be blindfolded.
“Sometimes there is a round target right over the chest so the sharpshooters have something to aim for the sharpshooters are hidden behind either a veil, or in a different room with a cutout that they can stick their guns through,” he said. “And then, at the appropriate time. They are told to fire. They all fire simultaneously.”
He said if the execution goes properly, five bullets strike the prisoner in the target range, causing an immediate death.
“So when it comes to painfulness is considered among the less painful methods of execution,” Dunham says.
Democratic State Sen. Dick Harpootlian proposed the firing squad amendment after it became apparent to him that under this bill an inmate would have no choice but to die by the electric chair.
“It’s an extraordinarily, gruesome, horrendous process, where they essentially catch on fire and don’t die immediately,” he said.
Harpootlian explained no method of execution is without faults, but said a firing squad is more preferable to hanging or the electric chair.
“There have been numerous instances in which the first jolt of electricity did not kill the prisoner, and so a second jolt was required,” Dunham said. “And most people who observe the electric chair executions, say it is something that they are unable to eliminate from their memory. And the question with the firing squad is, ‘Does the state want to be known as a state that shoots its citizens to death?’”
Harpootlian says he will leave it up to the Department of Corrections and the agency’s director Bryan Stirling to decide how the firing squad would be carried out in South Carolina if the bill were to pass.
“I don’t think we need to micromanage it,” Harpootlian said. “It’s a tough process but I have faith Bryan Stirling will get it done…he’s a compassionate guy, he’s a bright guy, he’ll find something that works both for the person to be executed and his personel who have to participate.”
He said it’s complicated whether to allow volunteers to be a part of the firing squad or drafting people to do it.
Harpootlian said he hopes it will be done by trained marksmen who are not seeking revenge against the inmate. However, he said he knows working on cases that have resulted in the death penalty being carried out that trauma can come from participating in this process.
“I can’t tell you it’s something that has not affected me, it has affected me. And I think about it. As bad as the guy was, anyone who would relish the idea of killing another human being hasn’t participated in this process…it is haunting,” he said.
According to the death penalty research nonprofit, Utah, Mississippi, and Oklahoma are the only other states that allow the use of a firing squad.
The state’s usual injection protocol calls for 3 drugs: the sedative pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. But the South Carolina Department of Corrections said it hasn’t had the drugs in stock since 2013, when its last supplies expired.
The manufacturers of those drugs don’t want to sell them to the state without a shield law that would prevent their names from being made public and, thereby, their companies being publicly associated with capital punishment.
Source: WCSC news, Staff, April 28, 2021
'They've got their focus on the wrong thing:' SC leaders debate death penalty legislation
Bill S.200 would make the state's default execution method the electric chair due to the state's lack of lethal injections. It would also allow inmates to choose to die by being shot in the heart by several sharpshooters. The bill passed the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday and some state leaders said 'it is unconscionable that legislators are focused on the method of execution when the entire death penalty system is racist, arbitrary, and error-prone.'
Frank Knack the Executive Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina (ACLU of SC) said the state's death penalty system has 3 key flaws.
“We watched the debate around the electric chair bill yesterday and it seemed like it was taking place in some alternative universe where we have a justice system that is fair," Knack said. "This lofty imposed punishment is based in a system that is racist, arbitrary and error-prone.”
Knack said often times many of the factors that influence whether or not someone is placed on death row aren't the most important ones.
“Contrary to the myth that capital punishment is reserved for the worst of the worst. The factors that are really behind capital punishment is the race and gender of the victim, the location of the offense, and the Solicitor in office at the time of the offense," Knack said.
He said the race of the suspect also plays a huge role when it comes to their sentencing.
“In South Carolina, Black people make up just around 27% of our population and yet make up a majority of people on our death row and when you actually look at the sentencing rate, you can really see that start to stand out where Black people are much more likely to be sentenced to death than white people across all factors."
It's one of the reasons Knack and other leaders with the ACLU of SC are calling on South Carolinians to ask their legislators not to pass the bill.
Someone who has a different opinion is Sen. Greg Hembree. Hembree said leaders with the ACLU of SC have their focus on the wrong thing and this is not a bill about whether or not to abolish the death penalty or not. He said that's another discussion.
“That’s an argument for abolishing the death penalty. This is a bill that simply sets forth the methods that are available to carry out a sentence that has already been determined by a jury in a court," Sen. Hembree said.
Hembree co-sponsored the bill. Private companies are refusing to sell lethal injections to prisons and Hembree said that's one of the reasons why this bill is so important to the state's justice system.
“It’s important that we live up to decisions that are made by our citizens in our judicial system. To have a private company to be allowed to subvert justice in South Carolina offends me no end," Sen. Hembree went on. "Why have a justice system if private companies really control the decisions that are being made by our juries and our judges?"
Hembree said he understands the death penalty, in general, is a topic many people have different opinions on but that is not what this bill is discussing.
“I understand they don’t like the death penalty. I get that the ACLU doesn’t like the death penalty. I understand that and there are a lot of other people that in good faith are opposed to the death penalty and I understand that. I’m not one of those people but that’s not what we’re talking about here," Senator Hembree said.
Yet Knack said you can't separate this bill from the death penalty system as a whole.
“I think that’s exactly our problem. That there’s this belief that you can divorce the two. When we talk about the method of execution, we’re talking about the method for killing someone. Where there’s absolutely no do-over if we got it wrong," Knack went on. "This belief that we can have a debate over the method of execution in the abstract and divorce it from those three you know fundamental problems with our capital punishment system is just deeply disturbing. It's deeply troubling to us that legislators continue to argue over the method of execution when the fundamental system itself has those three flaws within it."
Knack said other states that had similar flaws in their system took the 'common sense approach' of placing a moratorium on the use of capital punishments until they can study the system and better understand whether it can be applied in a fair and just way.
The bill has already passed the Senate and Gov. Henry McMaster said he will pass whatever comes to his desk.
Source: WPDE news, Staff, April 28, 2021
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde