Published on: Saturday, September 10, 2022

A Richland County, South Carolina, judge ruled that firing squads and electrocutions are unconstitutional in South Carolina (article available here).

In 2021, South Carolina passed a new law providing that, if the department of corrections determines that lethal injection is not available, the person will be electrocuted in South Carolina’s 110-year-old electric chair unless they elect death by firing squad.

South Carolina has never used a firing squad to carry out an execution, even though the method has existed for decades, leading the court to conclude it is unusual.

One of the inmates in the lawsuit, Richard Bernard Moore, was scheduled earlier in the year to be the first person executed by firing squad in the state after the legislature added the option for prisoner executions.

The use of a firing squad is also cruel, the court found, because it causes death by damaging the person’s heart and surrounding bone and tissue. This is extremely painful unless the person is unconscious, and experts testified the person is likely to be conscious for at least 10 seconds after impact—more if the ammunition does not fully incapacitate the heart.

The court concluded that the excruciating pain resulting from the gunshot wounds and broken bones constitutes “torture, a possibly lingering death, and pain beyond that necessary for the mere extinguishment of death, making the punishment cruel.”

Contrary to early assumptions about the electric chair, there is no evidence that electrocution produces an instantaneous or painless death, the court found.

South Carolina has electrocuted seven people since 1976.

“There is evidence,” the court continued, that people “executed by electrocution continue to move, breathe and even scream after the shock is administered.”

At a minimum, the court observed that the electric chair is “no longer viewed as a reliable method of administering a painless death, and the underlying assumptions upon which the electric chair is based, dating back to the 1800s, have since been disproven.”

Morever, the court found that electrocution is “inconsistent with both the concepts of evolving standards of decency and the dignity of man.” After more than a century of use, the court concluded, it is time to retire South Carolina’s electric chair as a violation of the state’s constitution.

Death penalty is legal in about half the states. Oklahoma is set to execute 25 people on its death row who have exhausted their appeals, killing 10 per year in 2023 and 2024.