Gov. McMaster releases statement on ruling
By Patrick Phillips, Mary Green and Jeffrey Collins
Published: Jul. 31, 2024 at 10:33 AM EDT|Updated: Jul. 31, 2024 at 5:26 PM EDT
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC/AP) - Gov. Henry McMaster has weighed in on the South Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the state’s three methods of execution.
The state’s highest court, in a nearly 100-page opinion, upheld the firing quad, electric chair and lethal injection, along with the state’s death penalty itself, are legal.
“The Supreme Court has rightfully upheld the rule of law,” McMaster said in a statement. “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.”
The ruling in Owens v. Stirling came on Chief Justice Don Beatty’s last day on the bench, as he has reached the mandatory retirement age of 72.
All five justices agreed with at least part of the ruling, opening the door to restart executions in a state that hasn’t put an inmate to death since 2011
The opinion came in response to a legal challenge filed by four death-row inmates who sued the state when they faced having to decide between death by electrocution or by firing squad when South Carolina’s supply of drugs for lethal injections had run out.
Lawmakers authorized the state to create a firing squad in 2021 to give inmates a choice between it and the old electric chair. The inmates sued, saying either choice was cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Constitution.
But back in September, McMaster and the South Carolina Department of Corrections told the state’s Supreme Court that a “shield law” passed by the General Assembly meant it could begin carrying out lethal injections again. The shield law was necessary to protect the identities of companies that sold the state the drugs necessary for carrying out lethal injections. Those companies refused to sell those drugs until a shield law was in place.
The state has been able to secure pentobarbital for carrying out an execution by lethal injection under a one-drug protocol that the corrections department’s policy was revised to include, the governor’s office said.
The Supreme Court allowed the inmates to add arguments that the shield law was too secret by not releasing the potency, purity and stabilization of lethal injection drugs.
South Carolina has 32 inmates on its death row. Four prisoners are suing, but four more have also run out of appeals, although two of them face a competency hearing before they could be executed, according to Justice 360, a group that describes itself as fighting for the inmates and for fairness and transparency in death penalty and other major criminal cases.
The state said in its argument before the state Supreme Court in February that lethal injection, electrocution and firing squad all fit existing death penalty protocols.
“Courts have never held the death has to be instantaneous or painless,” Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for Gov. Henry McMaster’s office, wrote.
But lawyers for the inmates asked the justices to agree with Circuit Judge Jocelyn Newman who stopped executions with the electric chair or firing squad.
She cited the inmates’ experts, who testified at a trial that prisoners would feel terrible pain whether their bodies were “cooking” by 2,000 volts of electricity in the chair, built in 1912, or if their hearts were stopped by bullets — assuming the three shooters were on target — from the yet-to-be used firing squad.
On the shield law, the attorneys for the inmate said they need to know if there is a regular supplier for the drug since it typically only has a shelf life of 45 days and what guidelines are in place to test the drug and make sure it is what the seller claims.
Too weak, and inmates may suffer without dying. Too strong, and the drug molecules can form tiny clumps that would cause intense pain when injected, according to court papers.
“No inmate in the country has ever been put to death with such little transparency about how he or she would be executed,” Justice 360 lawyer Lindsey Vann wrote.
South Carolina used to carry out an average of three executions a year and had more than 60 inmates on death row when the last execution was carried out in 2011. Since then, successful appeals and natural deaths have lowered the number to 32.
Prosecutors have sent only three new prisoners to death row in the past 13 years. Facing rising costs, the lack of lethal injection drugs and more vigorous defenses, they are choosing to accept guilty pleas and life in prison without parole.
The Supreme Court was expected to issue orders of execution once the case was settled.
Copyright 2024 WCSC. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved.
