Execution stays in hand, SC death row inmates drop requests for emergency injunction
Two death row inmates who sought court intervention in the weeks before they were scheduled to be executed are taking a step back from their appeals.
Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens, who received stays from the state Supreme Court days before Sigmon was scheduled for execution, asked that court to dismiss their appeal and withdrew their motion for an emergency injunction in a federal appellate court.
The step back from their legal cases comes after the state Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Corrections could not proceed with executions until it could offer the inmates a choice between two or more methods of execution. Because the state is currently unable to purchase the necessary drugs for the lethal injection, that means that executions cannot be carried out until Corrections can offer the firing squad as a method of execution.
The department is currently working on creating procedures and policies for a death by firing squad. That method has never been used to carry out an official state execution in South Carolina before.
Sigmon and Owens were granted stays of execution June 16 — two days before Sigmon was scheduled to be executed. Owens was initially scheduled to be executed the next week on June 25.
On June 22, Owens and Sigmon’s lawyers filed a motion with the state Supreme Court asking them to dismiss their appeal, calling it “moot” since the pair had been granted stays of execution.
That case was concerning the constitutionality of South Carolina’s new execution law, passed in May.
Under the old law, the default method of execution was the lethal injection, so if an inmate did not expressly choose to die in the electric chair, the state could not force them to do so. When drug companies stopped selling the lethal injection drugs to states seeking to use them in executions, it created a shortage in South Carolina, and the state suddenly could not carry out executions.
Lawmakers sought to remedy that this year by changing the default method of execution to the electric chair. Under the revised law passed in May, the default method is the electric chair, but inmates can choose the lethal injection or the firing squad if those methods are available.
Lawyers for the death row inmates argued that the change in the law was unconstitutional, arguing that the retroactive nature of the law, which makes it apply to inmates sentenced to death before the law was changed, is unlawful because it forces inmates to die by a more painful method.
They asked a judge in Richland County to issue an injunction to the new law, which would have halted executions.
A circuit court judge, however, ruled against them, saying it was unlikely that the attorneys’ arguments “little likelihood of success.” The attorneys subsequently appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court.
In a federal appellate court, the inmates asked that their request for an emergency injunction also be dismissed.
That case stemmed from a case that the inmates lost in federal court, where their attorneys argued that the electric chair violated the Eighth Amendment, which protects from cruel and unusual punishment.
Despite previous opinions from the Supreme Court saying the electric chair does not qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, the inmates’ lawyers argued that it was time for the court to reevaluate.
A Florence federal judge ruled against their request for an emergency injunction, saying they were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their argument.
