By Andy Brack
Statehouse Report
The S.C. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the state’s death penalty, which now includes a firing squad in addition to lethal injection and the electric chair, is legal.
All five justices agreed with at least part of the ruling, which opens the path to continue executions in a state that hasn’t had one since 2011. South Carolina has executed 43 inmates since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. Nearly all inmates chose lethal injection. The option for firing squad was added in 2023 to circumvent concerns about injections.
In the ruling, two justices, however, wrote they thought the firing squad was not a legal way to kill an inmate, and one justice said the electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment.
But the death penalty law is legal, Associate Justice John Few wrote in the majority opinion, because instead of seeking to inflict pain,