South Carolina is now ready to hold out executions by firing squad, the Division of Corrections stated in a chilling statement Friday.
The shootings can start as soon as the state Supreme Courtroom approves the specifics of the process, the Greenville News reported.
After a legislation was handed final yr permitting firing squads, the state spent $53,000 to renovate the capital punishment facility at Broad River Correctional Establishment in Columbia “to incorporate the capability to carry out an execution by firing squad,” the assertion famous.
South Carolina’s major technique of execution is the electrical chair. However by legislation, inmates might now select loss of life by deadly injection or a firing squad — supplied the strategies can be found. The firing squad possibility was added after the state was unable to acquire deadly medicine, which has stalled executions for 10 years.
There are at the moment 37 individuals on South Carolina’s loss of life row, The Associated Press reported.
In a shooting-death execution within the state, three members of a firing squad will stand behind a wall and purpose their rifles on the condemned particular person via a sq. opening, the News reported.
The particular person might be strapped to a chair on the opposite aspect of the wall, dealing with the gun barrels, however with a hood positioned over their head. A “small aim point might be positioned over their coronary heart by a member of the execution staff,” in response to the Division of Corrections assertion.
Members of the firing squad might be volunteers from the division.
Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah are the one different states with firing squad executions. Since 1960, 4 prisoners have been killed by firing squad within the U.S. — all in Utah. John Albert Taylor, who was convicted of raping and killing an 11-year-old woman, requested a firing squad for his 1996 execution to make some extent that the state sanctioned homicide.
As of final yr, 24 states allowed some type of execution, and three states had moratoriums towards the loss of life penalty, in response to the Death Penalty Information Center.
