South Carolina push to resume executions with electric chair

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


JEFFREY COLLINS,
Associated Press
Feb. 23, 2021
Updated: Feb. 23, 2021 5:34 p.m.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina is dusting off its electric chair and trying to restart executions in the state after going nearly 10 years without putting an inmate to death.

A House Committee voted 14-7 on Tuesday to make electrocution the default for an execution. The bill now goes to the House floor while a similar bill is on the Senate floor.

Right now, inmates can choose between electrocution and the current default method of lethal injection. Because the state doesn't have the drugs to put an inmate to death, South Carolina is under a de facto moratorium on the death penalty.

South Carolina last put an inmate to death nearly 10 years ago and its supply of lethal injection drugs has since expired. In the decade before that, the state executed 17 people.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/article/South-Carolina-push-to-resume-executions-with-15973810.php

[brooklynite]

1. Like Donald Trump and nuclear weapons?

We've got the thing so why can't we use it?

[twodogsbarking]

2. Some people probably deserve the death penalty

but it is barbarian.

[Yeehah]

4. No doubt but the government should not have the power to order death

I have come to this position after seeing many corrupt and evil people in government, including unscrupulous prosecutors.

[Corgigal]

3. Can choose?

Fuck those ghouls.

[machoneman]

5. Let me guess: every single inmate is black! Gee, they ought to fry Lyin' Lindsey instead.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

6. Death by electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment.

On June 16, 1944, an African-American teenager, 14-year-old George Stinney, became the youngest person ever executed in the electric chair when he was electrocuted at the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina.

As he was lead to the electric chair he was crying and carrying a large Bible. It turned out he was so short the guards had to sit him on the Bible so he could reach the ring that fit around his head. I've read a full description of the process and results of his electrocution, and it was ghastly.

His conviction was overturned in 2014 after a circuit court judge vacated his sentence on the grounds that Stinney did not receive a fair trial. The judge determined that Stinney's legal counsel was inadequate, thus violating his rights under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oops! Sorry we killed you, kid.

This is one of many reasons I'm against the death penalty.

After I graduated from law school in South Carolina my first job was as legal assistant to a circuit judge. Once he learned I had a degree in journalism, one of my tasks was to write the instructions the judge would read to the jury before they retired to make their decision. We tried a capital crime while I was there, so I had the opportunity to research the death penalty in depth before I wrote the instructions. It made the possibility that someone could die because of the words I had written very real. The jury decided that life imprisonment without the possibility of parole was appropriate. Whew!