South Carolina is now ready to carry out executions by firefighters, the Department of Corrections said in a killer statement Friday.
The shooting could begin if the state Supreme Court approves the specifics of the procedure, Greenville News reported.
After a law was passed last year that allowed shooting teams, the state spent $ 53,000 to renovate the main penitentiary at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Colombia “to include the capacity for an execution by the. Execute shooting teams, “the statement said.
South Carolina’s primary means of execution is the electric chair. But by law, inmates can now choose death by lethal injection or a firing squad – provided the methods are available. The option for the shooting team was added after the state was unable to get fatal drugs, which stopped the increases for 10 years.
There are currently 37 people on death row from South Carolina, the Associated Press reported.
In a shooting in the state, three members of a shooting team will stand behind a wall and point their guns at the convicted person through a square aperture, reports the News.
The person is fixed on a chair on the other side of the wall, opposite the barrel of the pistol, but placed with a hood over his head. A “small target is set by a member of the execution team over their heart,” according to the Department of Corrections.
The members of the firearms will be volunteers from the department.
Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah are the only other states with a fire department. Since 1960, four prisoners have been killed by firefighters in the United States – all in Utah. John Albert Taylor, who was convicted of raping and killing an 11-year-old girl, asked a fire department for its 1996 execution to make a point that the state had sanctioned murder.
As of last year, 24 states have allowed some form of execution, and three states have had moratoriums on the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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