The South Carolina Supreme Court determined on Wednesday that the use of the electric chair and firing squad as methods for executing death-row inmates is constitutional, amid the nationwide scarcity of lethal injection drugs, Courthouse News reports. Noting the state had not executed an inmate for more than 10 years, Justice John Cannon Few wrote in a 40-page opinion for the majority that state lawmakers have made a “sincere effort” to make the death penalty less inhumane while permitting the state to do its duty. The judge rejected arguments from four death-row inmates who challenged a 2021 state law permitting the use of firing squads by arguing that it was "corporal, cruel or unusual punishments," all prohibited under the state constitution.
In 2021 South Carolina had passed a law permitting the use of firing squads after prison officials announced they did not have access to the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections. After the inmates sued, Richland County judge ruled in their favor before the issue was appealed to the State Supreme Court. In his decision this week, Few determined that the methods did not constitute corporal punishment by relying on a 1769 definition of “corporal punishment” provided by Sir William Blackstone, who wrote that corporal punishment was inflicted to reform an offender or discourage him from committing future crimes. Reform is unnecessary if the defendant is dead, wrote Few. No inmate has been executed by firing squad in South Carolina. While firing squads remain rare nationally, the exeuction method has not been outlawed and “there is a serious discussion developing in this country as to whether the firing squad is a less inhumane method of execution than even lethal injection,” Few wrote.
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