South Carolina is now the fourth state in the U.S. to offer firing squad executions as a method of carrying out their death penalty sentences, the South Carolina Department of Corrections said Friday.
“Protocols have been written, and the department is ready to carry out an order of execution by firing squad if the inmate chooses this method,” the statement read.
South Carolina joins Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah in offering the option to death row inmates, and the state said it put $53,600 into renovations of its Capital Punishment Facility at Broad River Correctional Institution to accommodate the execution method’s addition after a 2021 state law mandated its inclusion. Those renovations included the installation of bullet-proof glass and a firing squad chair with restraints for the inmate to await their ultimate fate.
Lethal injection is the prevailing choice of execution among the nation’s death row inmates, but state officials have reported difficulties in obtaining the drugs used to carry out that method. As a result, South Carolina passed a bill in 2021, signed by Governor Henry McMaster, that listed the electric chair and a firing squad as acceptable alternate choices, should lethal injection drugs be unavailable at the appointed time of execution.
That drug shortage has led to a delay in come previously-scheduled executions due to an injunction by the South Carolina Supreme Court, after legal challenges bemoaned the lack of a firing squad option for inmates scheduled to die.
With that option now officially extended to inmates, the executions are expected to resume.
Firing squad executions remain extremely rare in America: Only three have been carried out since 1976.
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