The South Carolina Supreme Court blocked the scheduled executions of two inmates for electrocution on Wednesday, saying their sentences cannot materialize until they are offered the option of choosing a
firing squad
, as recently established by state capital law. revised.
The highest state court unanimously considered that the executions of Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens, set for this month, should be suspended "due to the
statutory right of the inmates to choose the manner of their execution
.
"
The executions were scheduled less than a month after the passage of a new law that allows convicts to choose between
electrocution
or
firing squad
if there are no drugs for the lethal injection.
Problems with lethal injection
This law is intended to resume executions after a 10-year hiatus attributed by the state to the inability to obtain the drugs.
[Execution of a woman sentenced to death for killing a mother and stealing her baby stopped]
Prison officials have already said that they are still out of stock of the drugs to prepare the lethal injection and that they have not yet assembled a firing squad.
The
109-year-old
electric chair
is the only option for now.
A spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Corrections, Chrysti Shain, explained in a statement that the institution "is making progress in creating policies and procedures for a firing squad."
"We are seeking guidance in other states. We will notify the court when firing squad is an option for executions," he added.
For now, it is unknown in what time frame it will be available, according to prison officials.
Federal Prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where 52-year-old Dustin Honken will be the third inmate executed this week this Friday.AP Photo / Michael Conroy
Lawyers for the two convicts have argued in their legal briefs that
death by electrocution is cruel and unusual
and have pointed out that the new law leads the state to apply less humane methods of execution.
Likewise, they have stressed that
both have the right to die by lethal injection
- the method chosen by both - and that the state has not exhausted all the avenues to obtain the necessary drugs.
[The Supreme Court will not block the execution of a man who fears an egregious death]
State attorneys maintain that prison officials simply follow the law and that the Supreme Court has never found electrocution unconstitutional.
Resources depleted
The execution of Sigmon, 63, was scheduled for Friday.
He has been on death row for nearly two decades after being convicted of the 2002 murder of his ex-girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat.
The authorities had set for June 25 the execution of Owens, a 43-year-old man who has been on and off death row since 1999 for the murder of a grocery store worker.
Both exhausted traditional remedies for amparo in recent months, which is why the state Supreme Court set and then suspended their executions earlier this year when the Department of Corrections reported that it still did not have the drugs for the lethal injection.
Then the new law on capital punishment was passed.
South Carolina is one of eight states that still use the electric chair and one of four that allow shooting, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The last execution recorded in the state was in 2011. The batch of drugs for lethal injection expired two years later.
There are currently 37 men on the state's death row.
With information from AP.
