SOUTH CAROLINA — South Carolina senators passed a bill 26-13 on Wednesday to bring back the electric chair for the state’s death row executions, as well as add firing squads as an execution option.
The bill now heads to the S.C. House, where a similar proposal died (no pun intended) last year.
Senate Republicans stated the bill was necessary as a way to combat the S.C. Corrections Department’s inability to carry out executions due to a lack of the medications and drugs needed for lethal injections.
Why is there a shortage of Lethal Injection drugs?
Well, the short version is it started in 2009 when the company Hospira began experiencing a supply issue and later announced it would no longer be producing sodium thiopental, which was used as the anesthetic in lethal injections at the time.
Given that Hospira was the only approved manufacturer of the drug in the United States, this led to a nationwide shortage that delayed and stalled executions in several states.
Things started to come to a head when activists in Europe (where capital punishment is illegal) discovered that drugs from European companies were being used as a replacement here in the US. Activists demanded their companies and governments take action, effectively creating a sort of “lethal drug embargo.”
States then began to replace sodium thiopental with other drugs but then the pharmaceutical companies in the US began blocking the use of their drugs in lethal injections.
“Hospira provides these products because they improve or save lives and markets them solely for use as indicated on the product labeling. As such, we do not support the use of any of our products in capital punishment procedures,” said Dr. Kees Groenhout, Hospira’s clinical research and development vice president
Basically, with no chemicals to administer the executions, death row inmates are in a sort of criminal justice system limbo.
In fact, currently, S.C.’s 35 death row inmates can simply insist on lethal injection as their means of execution — which they can legally do — and effectively block their executions.
According to the S.C. Dept. of Corrections (SCDC), the use of an electric chair in South Carolina began in August, 1912. Currently, the electric chair is located in the death chamber of the Capital Punishment Facility — the same area that is used for lethal injection.
“A person convicted of a capital crime can elect to be executed either by lethal injection or electrocution,” SCDC officials state. “This election must be made in writing 14 days before the execution date. If the person waives the right of election and the crime was committed on or after June 8, 1995, then the penalty must be administered by lethal injection.”
The laws currently state a person convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death by electrocution prior to June 8, 1995, must be administered death by electrocution unless the person elects death by lethal injection in writing 14 days before the execution date.
