Black South Carolina Trial Judge Strikes Down "WhichCraft" Law that Forced Death Row Inmates to Choose Between the "Cruel and Unusual Punishments" of Being Murdered by Firing Squad or Electrocution

From [DPIC] A South Carolina trial court has issued an injunction preventing the state from carrying out executions using a firing squad or the electric chair, ruling that those methods violate the state’s constitutional prohibition against “cruel, unusual, and corporal punishments.”

In a 38-page opinion issued September 6, 2022, Richland County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jocelyn Newman (pictured) opinion offered a sweeping condemnation of the state's 2021 method-of-execution statute, which made the electric chair the state’s default method of execution and added the firing squad as a second alternative to lethal injection. The decision came following a week-long trial in a case brought by death-row prisoners Freddie Owens, Brad Sigmon, Gary Terry, and Richard Moore that challenged the constitutionality of executions by firing squad or electrocution. Relying upon expert testimony presented in that trial, Newman found that the pain and bodily mutilation caused by electrocution and firing squad were intolerable under the state constitution.

In striking down the law, Judge Newman noted that only one state in the U.S. had carried out any executions by firing squad over the past fifty years and that South Carolina was the only state to have designated the electric chair as the default method of execution. South Carolina, she declared, had “turned back the clock” and “ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency.”

A spokesperson for Governor Henry McMaster said that governor disagreed with the court's ruling and would appeal.