COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina can execute death row inmates by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair, the state’s high court ruled Wednesday, opening the door to restart executions after more than a decade.
All five justices agreed with at least part of the ruling. But two of the justices said they felt the firing squad was not a legal way to kill an inmate and one of them felt the electric chair is a cruel and unusual punishment.
In the U.S., 27 states allow the death penalty, but only seven have executed inmates in the past three years as attorneys and advocates argue over excessive pain, proper procedures and the legality of new methods, such as suffocation by nitrogen gas or firing squads that have rarely been used outside the military.
“We start by acknowledging the reality that there is simply no elegant way to kill a man,” Justice John Few wrote in the majority opinion.
South Carolina allowing inmates to choose from the three execution methods is far from an effort to inflict pain but a sincere attempt at making the death penalty less inhumane, Few wrote.
As many as eight inmates may be out of traditional appeals. It is unclear when executions could restart or if there will be appeals.
“We are currently evaluating the next steps in the litigation and remain committed to advocating for the protection of our clients’ rights,” said Lindsey Vann, an attorney for Justice 360, an advocacy group for inmates.
South Carolina can carry out any of the three methods as soon as the state Supreme Court issues an execution order, Corrections Department Director Bryan Stirling said.
“Choice cannot be considered cruel because the condemned inmate may elect to have the State employ the method he and his lawyers believe will cause him the least pain,” Few wrote.
South Carolina has executed 43 inmates since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. Nearly all inmates have chosen lethal injection since it became an option in 1995.
South Carolina hasn’t performed an execution since 2011. The state’s supplies of drugs for lethal injections expired and no pharmaceutical companies would sell more if they could be publicly identified. The justices said the state was allowed to use one drug instead of three after a shield law passed in 2023 allowed officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers secret and get the sedative pentobarbital in September.
Lawmakers authorized the state to create a firing squad in 2021 to give inmates a choice between it and the same electric chair that state bought in 1912. The inmates sued, saying either choice was cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Constitution.
Four of the five justices agreed that all three methods aren't considered cruel under the state constitution. Justice John Kittredge said he would rule the firing squad was illegal because it was unusual — it has been available since South Carolina became a state but never used.
Chief Justice Don Beatty said the electric chair and firing squad are both cruel. A firing squad would leave a bloody scene and there would be no assurance that the three executioners would precisely target the heart, he said. The electric chair is rarely used anymore because it's painful and disfiguring, with “prisoners being engulfed in flames, suffering extensive burns, and bleeding prior to death," Beatty said.
Beatty compared the electric chair to burning someone at the stake.
“The only difference, in my view, is the ‘modernization’ in the last century of the means of ignition — from a match to electric current. The end result of the process, for all intents and purposes, remains the same,” Beatty wrote.
The justices said the prison director still must provide proof the lethal injection drug is stable and correctly mixed. Inmates can sue if they disagree with the determination and the court promised a prompt decision.
South Carolina has 32 inmates on its death row. Four prisoners are suing, but four more have also run out of appeals, although two of them face a competency hearing before they could be executed, according to Justice 360.
Gov. Henry McMaster said the justices interpreted the law correctly. “This decision is another step in ensuring that lawful sentences can be duly enforced and the families and loved ones of the victims receive the closure and justice they have long awaited,” he said in a statement.
The state said in its argument before the state Supreme Court in February that lethal injection, electrocution and firing squad all fit existing death penalty protocols. “Courts have never held the death has to be instantaneous or painless,” wrote Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for the governor’s office.
South Carolina used to carry out an average of three executions a year and had more than 60 inmates on death row when the last execution was carried out in 2011. Since then, successful appeals and natural deaths have lowered the number to 32.
Prosecutors have sent only three new prisoners to death row in the past 13 years. Facing rising costs, the lack of lethal injection drugs and more vigorous defenses, they are choosing to accept guilty pleas and life in prison without parole even in some cases where a convicted murderer was originally sent to death row by a jury.
FILE - This undated photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state's death chamber in Columbia, S.C., including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. Quincy Allen, 44, was taken off death row Monday, July 22, 2024, after agreeing to a life sentence when a federal court overturned his 2005 death sentence for killing two people in South Carolina. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File)
Israel struck tents outside two major hospitals in the Gaza Strip overnight, killing at least two people, including a local reporter, and wounding nine, including six journalists, Palestinian medics said. Separate strikes killed at least 15 others across the Gaza Strip, according to hospitals.
Israel ended a ceasefire with Hamas in March and has cut off all food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza — a tactic that rights groups say is a war crime — while issuing new displacement orders that have forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee Israeli bombardments and ground operations.
Israel's war in Gaza, now in its 18th month, has killed over 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel has vowed to escalate the war until Hamas returns dozens of remaining hostages, disarms and leaves the territory.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, and taking 251 others hostage. The group still holds 59 captives — 24 of whom are believed to be alive.
Here is the latest:
The head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon says the balance of force in the country has now “significantly changed” which may finally enable slow progress toward a more permanent ceasefire, “but this may still take a long time.”
Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro Sáenz told the U.N. Security Council Monday that an internal political process could be required to deal with key issues including dealing with Hezbollah fighters and other armed groups.
Sáenz said other issues that need to be tackled are military capabilities “and a political track between Lebanon and Israel to deal with questions of sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as border demarcation.”
He said Lebanon’s consent to the deployment of the 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL, which faces increasing threats from disinformation and misinformation, is also key.
To counter disinformation and misinformation, Sáenz said UNIFIL must establish “a strong fact-based narrative” to avoid misperceptions, for example, that U.N. peacekeepers work at the behest of Israel, have a hidden agenda, and are an occupation force.
The leaders of the United Nations’ humanitarian agencies issued a dire joint warning about Gaza on Monday, calling for world leaders “to ensure the basic principles of international humanitarian law are upheld.”
The plea from humanitarian chiefs come as Israel has blocked the entrance of commercial and humanitarian supplies to Gaza for more than a month while issuing new displacement orders that have forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee once again.
“More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck,” directors and leaders of WHO, UNICEF, UNOPS, UNRWA, WFP and OCHA said in a statement. “Over 1,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured in just the first week after the breakdown of the ceasefire, the highest one-week death toll among children in Gaza in the past year.”
They added that “we are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry said over the last 24 hours local hospitals have received the bodies of 57 people killed by Israeli strikes. Another 137 people have been wounded, it said.
Monday’s update brings the total Palestinian death toll from the 18-month Israel-Hamas war to 50,752, with more 115,475 wounded.
The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its records, but says more than half the dead are women and children.
Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, shops were closed on Monday and there were few cars on the streets of Ramallah where the Western-backed Palestinian Authority is headquartered.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state. The Palestinian Authority administers population centers with limited autonomy.
French President Emmanuel Macron has also urged the lifting of Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid.
Macron was in Cairo on Monday to meet with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and later with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, close Western allies, who are also calling for a ceasefire.
Israel ended its truce with Hamas last month and cut off all imports of food, fuel and humanitarian aid to the territory’s 2 million Palestinians to try and pressure Hamas to accept new terms in their ceasefire agreement.
Egypt and the Gulf nation of Qatar have served as key mediators with Hamas.
The military said Monday that soldiers killed the teen who endangered motorists on a road in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Sunday that a Palestinian-American teen was killed in the incident and two others were injured, one in critical condition.
The violence occurred near Turmus Aya, a town with a sizable population of Palestinian-Americans.
The strike hit a media tent outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, setting it ablaze, killing Yousef al-Faqawi, a reporter for the Palestine Today news website and another man. Six other reporters were wounded in that strike.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas militant, without providing further information.
Israel also struck tents on the edge of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza.
Nasser Hospital also said it received 13 bodies, including six women and four children, from separate strikes overnight. Al-Aqsa Hospital said two people were killed and three wounded in a strike on a home in Deir al-Balah.
This story has been corrected to show that Palestine Today is a news website, not a TV station.
Smoke rises to the sky after an explosion in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Palestinian women walk past closed shops during a general strike to protest the war in Gaza, in the Old City of Jerusalem, Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Palestinians mourn their relatives who were killed by an Israeli airstrike, at the hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, on Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians retrieve a body from the rubble of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, on Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians search for survivors amid the debris of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, on Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians search for survivors amid the debris of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, on Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Smoke rises to the sky following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
A Palestinian girl struggles as she and others try to get donated food at a distribution center in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians wait to get donated food at a distribution center in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
A woman looks at the destroyed house of journalist Islam Meqdad, where she was killed along with her son and five other family members in an Israeli army strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
