Don't overlook this Midlands family of judges when discussing the death penalty in South Carolina | Opinion

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : It became the eighth state to use electric chairs in 1912 and added lethal injection in 1995.
50% : In doing so, the General Assembly ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency.
44% : Clifton is one of only seven South Carolina judges to have presided over multiple trials that sent people now on death row to it.
42% : First the news: Supreme Court justices paved the way for South Carolina executions by lethal injection, firing squad or electrocution to resume, even though one called firing squads and electrocution cruel and unusual punishment, and another said the firing squad was unusual, and thus illegal.
40% : Today, there are currently 32 inmates on death row in South Carolina.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.