A South Carolina Lawsuit Over Execution Methods Gets Approval to Move Forward
A judge ruled Thursday that a lawsuit brought by four death row inmates challenging South Carolina’s execution methods can move forward as the state attempts to carry out its first execution in more than a decade.
Circuit Judge Jocelyn Newman agreed to a request by the prisoners’ lawyers to closely examine officials’ claims that they can’t secure lethal injection drugs, leaving the electric chair and the firing squad as the only options for capital punishment.
Attorneys for the inmates, who have largely exhausted their appeals, argued that dying by gunshot or electrocution would be a brutal process which violates a state ban on cruel, corporal and unusual punishments, and that prison officials have shown little proof they can’t get the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections instead.
