South Carolina prison director says electric chair, firing squad and lethal injection ready to go (2024)

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South Carolina prison director says electric chair, firing squad and lethal injection ready to go? ›

The state's electric chair, built in 1912, was tested June 25 and found to be working properly, Stirling wrote, without providing additional details. And the firing squad, allowed by a 2021 law, has the guns, ammunition and training it needs, Stirling wrote.

-- South Carolina has set a Sept. 20 date to put inmate Freddie Eugene Owens to death in what would be the state's first execution in more than 13 years.

The first, more powerful jolt (between 2000 and 2,500 volts) is intended to cause immediate unconsciousness, ventricular fibrillation, and eventual cardiac arrest. The second, less powerful jolt (500–1,500 volts) is intended to cause lethal damage to the vital organs.

Firing squad still remains as a method of execution in four states if lethal injection cannot be performed. The most recent execution by this method was that of Ronnie Gardner. By his own choosing, Gardner was executed by firing squad in Utah on June 17, 2010.

Medical experts have found that lethal injection can cause pulmonary edema – “the feeling of choking, drowning in [one's] own fluids, suffocating, being buried alive, and [a] burning sensation” while being “unable to speak or scream.”

On January 15, 1943, Sue Logue, George Logue, and Clarence Bagwell were executed in South Carolina's electric chair, in that order. The executions took place at approximately 7:00 am. Sue Logue's execution made her the first woman, albeit not the only one, to be executed in South Carolina's electric chair.

One of the busiest states for capital punishment, South Carolina hasn't performed an execution since 2011. Its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and companies refused to sell more. But the addition of a secrecy law last year allowed the state to obtain a different drug.

If all goes as planned, the entire execution takes about five minutes, with death usually occurring less than two minutes after the final injection. However, botched lethal injections have sometimes required more than two hours to achieve death.

Wenceslao Moguel Herrera (1 November 1896 – 29 July 1976), known in the press as El Fusilado (Spanish: "The Shot One"), was a Mexican soldier under Pancho Villa who was captured on 18 March 1915 during the Mexican Revolution, and survived execution by firing squad.

Denno explains that modern firing squads would work in a specific way, with an inmate strapped to a chair and surrounded by sandbags to prevent ricocheting bullets. Five shooters would be shooting from behind a wall through a small opening. Prisoners would be shot in the chest, with the shooters aiming for the heart.

Is death by firing squad painful? ›

Inmates could remain conscious for up to 10 seconds after being shot depending on where bullets strike, Antognini said, and those seconds could be "severely painful, especially related to shattering of bone and damage to the spinal cord."

To avoid disfigurement due to multiple shots to the head, the shooters are typically instructed to aim at the heart, sometimes aided by a paper or cloth target. The prisoner is typically blindfolded or hooded as well as restrained.

Despite the pushback, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has called nitrogen gas “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised.”

In some medieval societies, a person who survived a death penalty, like hanging, was set free, because it was believed that God intervened in the matter of justice to allow the person to live. However, no society today operates this principle, and a person who survives will promptly be subject to execution again.

In a common lethal injection protocol, a trio of chemicals is administered in three steps: First, an anesthetic renders an inmate unconscious; then a second drug paralyzes them; and finally, a third stops their heart.

Electrocution Is Like “Being Burned Alive”

Contrary to early assumptions about the electric chair, there is no evidence that electrocution produces an instantaneous or painless death, the court found.

It provides that prison staff, official witnesses, members of the victim's family and representatives of the convicted felon be present.

Their suit targets the state's 2021 execution protocol, which allows prisoners to choose between electrocution, firing squad, or lethal injection. The protocol designates electrocution as the default, making South Carolina the only state with electrocution as its primary method.

An execution schedule is a series of tasks, or steps, that can be run sequentially at a scheduled time. An execution schedule can also be tasks that run when they are triggered by an event such as a build completion.

Death warrant

A paper, typically signed by the governor or a judge, setting a date of execution. The warrant is then served on the defendant and his attorney. Typically, shortly before the execution, the inmate is moved to a cell closer to the death chamber and kept on 24 hour suicide watch.