South Carolina Supreme Court Upholds Multiple Death Penalty Methods - FITSNews

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : The other thirty-seven were carried out via lethal injection - including the May 6, 2011 execution of 36-year-old Jeffrey Brian Motts.
53% : "Last year, the S.C. General Assembly passed - and governor Henry McMaster signed - Act 16 of 2023, a shield law which provided for the "nondisclosure of (the) identity of members of an execution team and the acquisition of drugs to administer a death sentence."
50% : And last fall, SCDC notified the court it had "secured the drugs necessary to carry out lethal injections" in the Palmetto State.
47% : Lethal injection, electrocution and the firing squad are all now legal means of dispatching condemned inmates in the Palmetto State ...South Carolina's supreme court overturned a ruling from one of its circuit court judges which had barred the state's Department of Corrections (SCDC) from implementing a variety of capital punishments - including lethal injections.
47% : According to S.C. circuit court judge Jocelyn Newman, those two methods "ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency."The high court disagreed.
46% : "Capital punishment in the Palmetto State has actually been an on-again, off-again proposition for decades.
44% : I challenged state lawmakers in the fall of 2020 to "ensure SCDC is supplied with the drugs it needs to carry out lethal injections, and then to ensure the availability of other methods of execution in the event circumstances warrant.
40% : "There's no point having a debate over the efficacy of capital punishment if it is only going to be carried out once a year using the most genteel of methods," I wrote seven years ago in an expansive piece on criminal justice reform.
39% : Nonetheless, Few correctly noted "capital punishment (in South Carolina) has been shut down for years because of the unavailability of the drugs necessary to carry out the death penalty by lethal injection.
39% : In 2022, a pair of scheduled executions were halted after death row inmates successfully challenged the state's new capital punishment law - which permitted executions by electrocution (or firing squad) in the event lethal injection was unavailable.

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