In preparation for the new option, the state spent more than $ 53,000 to equip the firing squad chamber. It has a metal chair with restrictions vis-à-vis a rectangular opening in the opposite wall, where three shooters shoot their weapons. The prisoner’s head would be covered with a hood. The three shooters, volunteers from the State Department for Corrections, had each loaded a rifle with live ammunition. All three would count the prisoner’s heart.
There is no good way to die from someone else’s hand. Deadly drugs sometimes fail, prolonging the experience of dying. Electrocution, inevitably brutal, sometimes fails and must be repeated and which can only be regarded as terribly inhuman.
Those who need proof of this can benefit from an audio record of 22 executions in Georgia using electric chairs recorded by members of the Georgia Department of Corrections for their own records. But in 1998, they were called, and court records were introduced, and later turned into an hour-long public radio special, “The Execution Tapes.”
Alternatively, you can read Louis Nizer’s horrific description of the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in “The Implosion Conspiracy”. The couple was electrocuted in 1953 to pass on nuclear secrets to Stalin’s Russia. It would be hard for such an end to be wished for anyone’s life, even for Soviet spy.
South Carolina law was introduced by Democrat Sen. Dick Harpootlian. A popular politician and former prosecutor, Harpootlian has argued that shooting is the “least painful” way to get killed. I take his word for it.
Other people think a firefighter is easier to report and I assume that argument has a psychological merit. That is, if you support the death penalty. I do not, for many reasons, but above all because I do not think the state should kill its citizens for any reason. Life without parole seems to be a more punishing outcome, especially since the death penalty is obviously not an effective deterrent. And the cost of keeping a prisoner alive is still usually less than the exorbitant cost of long deaths. As things stand, the average length of stay on the death penalty in the United States is 22 years, according to the Pew Research Center. And of course, there is a 1 in 25 chance, conservatively, that the death penalty is innocent, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences 2014. In my book, an innocent person killed by the state is one too many.
My perspective is admittedly academic. I have not experienced the murder of a good friend or family member and may feel different under such circumstances. Revenge is a powerful force. But if we can dispassionate and effectively kill a person and restrictions, we can certainly use the same dispensation for the longer, harsher punishment of life behind bars. Some 24 states still have the death penalty, while 23 others in the District of Columbia have abolished it. Three states have introduced a moratorium.
There are currently 35 inmates on death row in South Carolina, two of whom – Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens – were previously scheduled for execution a month after the law was passed. Both were handed down by the South Carolina Supreme Court because neither was given a choice of method as required under the new law. This was because the state could not buy the necessary drugs and the fire brigade infrastructure was not yet in place.
No choice, the judges ruled unanimously, no execution.
Both Sigmon and Owens have since opted for lethal injection, which is still unavailable. The 64-year-old Sigmon, who said he feared he would be “fried like a piece of bacon” in the electric chair, was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat. Owens, 44, was sentenced to death for the Halloween murder of a convenience store owner who was shot in the head during a robbery because she could not open the safe.
Sigmon has been on death row for 20 years; Evenings for 23. The state is still trying to buy deadly drugs for their executions.
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