South Carolina to carry out first firing squad execution in US in 15 years

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : Most U.S. executions use lethal injection, introduced in the 1970s as a less outwardly violent method.
45% : The last three men to be executed by South Carolina all chose lethal injection, and the executions lasted for about 20 minutes before they were declared dead, Sigmon's lawyer, Bo King, said in an interview.
38% : And autopsies of people executed by lethal injection have sometimes found frothy, bloody liquid filling the lungs' airways, which some doctors say indicate the condemned person experienced the painful sensation of drowning before they died.
38% : In January, the U.S. Department of Justice cited those autopsy reports and withdrew its lethal injection protocol, opens new tab for federal executions, saying it may cause unconstitutional pain and suffering.
35% : Brad Sigmon, 67, chose to be killed by a firing squad, saying he feared the alternatives of the electric chair or lethal injection would risk a slower and more torturous death.

*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.