South Carolina | Emergency appeal filed to halt electrocution of 2 Greenville men

Lawyers of Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens, 2 Greenville men set to be executed under South Carolina's new law mandating electrocution as the default mode, filed an emergency motion in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday.

⇦ PHOTO: Allen Lee Davis (July 20, 1944 – July 8, 1999) was an American mass murderer who was executed for the May 11, 1982, murder of Nancy Weiler, who was three months pregnant, in Jacksonville, Florida. Davis was executed on July 8, 1999, via electrocution. His execution was considered botched, with witnesses reporting that Davis was still alive after the power to Old Sparky was switched off. Blood had also leaked from Davis's nose during the execution, although prison officials claim this was caused by a nose bleed. Because of the controversy surrounding his execution, Davis remains the last person executed by electric chair in Florida. All subsequent executions in Florida have been carried out by lethal injection, although inmates can still choose to be executed by electric chair. (Source: Wikipedia)

Sigmon, set to be executed this week Friday and Owens, on June 25, will "suffer irreparable harm absent an injunction," read the court filings.

What the state will suffer from the delay in execution pales in comparison to the "torturous death" the 2 men will suffer, the court filings said.

Just last week on June 11, a federal judge denied the attempt Sigmon and Owens made to halt their executions.

U.S. District Judge R. Bryan Harwell ordered a temporary restraining order be denied based on South Carolina's good faith effort to use lethal injection drugs if available and that if not, electrocution was still a constitutional means of execution, the order states.

On June 9, attorneys representing the Greenville County men argued before a federal judge to block the upcoming executions, saying that an execution by an electric chair violated their Eighth Amendment.

The state had counter-argued that there was no evidence that lethal injections were not as painful as the electrocution.

The current appeal, as per the court filings, contests Harwell's decision. While the Sigmon and Owens have presented medical evidence of what the electric chair can do to the human body, the state has not presented a comparative argument, they argued.

"At a bare minimum, the public has an interest in knowing the answer to the question the Movants have raised—whether a state may carry out executions in the electric chair, against the will of the condemned," the court filing said.

Sigmon, 63, was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents, David and Gladys Larke. According to court documents, he went into their home on April 27, 2001, and beat them with a baseball bat. Owens was convicted of killing convenience store clerk Irene Graves while he was part of a robbery spree on Halloween 1997, according to court documents and newspaper archives.

Meanwhile, Richard Moore of Spartanburg is awaiting word from the S.C. Supreme Court on a request to vacate his death sentence.

Moore, 56, received the death penalty in 2001 after his conviction for killing a convenience store clerk in 1999.

He was scheduled to be executed Dec. 4, 2020, but the S.C. Supreme Court delayed the execution.

The S.C. Department of Corrections did not have the drugs for lethal injection.

Since the stay, his case was sent to the state Supreme Court for review to determine whether his death sentence was disproportionate to the crime.

Source: Spartanburg Herald Journal, Staff, June 15, 2021

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