South Carolina will now be able to perform executions via firing squad after a decadelong hiatus.
The state’s Department of Corrections announced Friday it made the necessary renovations at its capital punishment facility to accommodate the method, which condemned prisoners can now choose as a means of death under a state law passed last year.
“Three firing squad members will be behind the wall, with rifles facing the inmate through the opening. The rifles and open portal will not be visible from the witness room. All three rifles will be loaded with live ammunition,” the state’s Department of Corrections said in a statement, describing the process. “The inmate will be strapped into the chair, and a hood will be placed over his head. A small aim point will be placed over his heart by a member of the execution team. After the warden reads the execution order, the team will fire.”
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South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill last May that made the electric chair the primary death row technique but imparted condemned prisoners with the right to choose between a firing squad and lethal injection if those options were available. The agency then conducted renovations and established protocols for the procedure.
While working on the bill, Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian added the death-by-firing-squad option, arguing it was the “least painful” technique available.
“The death penalty is going to stay the law here for a while,” Harpootlian said, per the Associated Press. “If we’re going to have it, it ought to be humane.”
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The 2021 bill was signed with the intent of resuming the death penalty, which had been on a 10-year hiatus in the state since its most recent execution in 2011. The Palmetto State has 37 prisoners on death row.
South Carolina is joined by Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah in allowing the firing squad technique to be used for executions. Since 1976, only three U.S. prisoners have been executed by firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
