The South Carolina state Senate yesterday passed, 32-11, a bill which “added a firing squad to the electric chair as alternatives if the state can’t execute condemned inmates by way of lethal injection,” Associated Press reported today.
According to South Carolina’s Deputy Attorney General Don Zelenka, 29 prisoners are currently on death row, but no prisoner has been executed for 10 years. AP explained that is because the state’s “supply of lethal injection drugs expired and it has not been able to buy any more. Currently, inmates can choose between the electric chair and lethal injection and since the drugs are not available, they [no surprise!] pick the method that can’t be done.”
Gov. Henry McMaster asked the legislature to give him a way to restart the executions of those inmates who have exhausted their appeals but whose murder by the state is blocked under the provisions of the old law. The new law orders that the condemned now have to be executed even if lethal injections are not available, but adds death by the firing squad as a “choice” to being electrocuted.
