The state of South Carolina, in the southeastern United States, has moved to institute death row firing squads to address the shortage of substances used in lethal injections, announced Monday, May 17 the governor of this southern state of the United States.
“This weekend, I ratified a law that will allow the state to apply the death penalty.
The families and relatives of the victims have the right to mourn and to obtain justice through the law.
Now we can do it, ”
said Henry McMaster on Twitter.
This Republican, in favor of capital punishment, wants to resume executions after a ten-year hiatus in his state.
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The law, signed on Friday, makes the electric chair the first choice of a death row inmate instead of lethal injection, and allows the formation of a firing squad, which becomes the second option.
Execution by injection will again become the priority option when the necessary substances become available again, according to the text.
Until now, a death row inmate had to choose between the chair and the injection, the latter option being automatic if he refused to choose.
A "appalling, shocking and abominable" decision
The South Carolina-based prisoner aid organization Incarcerated Outreach Network on Twitter denounced the decision
"appalling, shocking and abominable
.
"
For the local representative of the large civil rights organization ACLU, Frank Knaack, the state has
"found a new way to restart executions within a racist, arbitrary and error-prone system
.
"
"The courts of South Carolina make mistakes but the death penalty is irreversible,"
he added in a statement, noting that people of color made up more than half of those on death row, but only 27% of the death penalty. population of the state.
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The electric chair, dubbed "Old Sparky", has not been used since 2008 and the last injection execution was in May 2011, according to the State Prisons Department and local media.
South Carolina is the fourth U.S. state to allow the death penalty by firing squad, along with Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC ).
Only three convicts have died in front of a firing squad, all in Utah, since the Supreme Court's reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, according to the Center.