South Carolina Argues Electric Chair and Firing Squads Are Constitutional

As states have struggled to acquire the medications used since the 1990s to put inmates to death via lethal injection, the landscape for having a method of execution that can be carried out has been complex in the United States. This week, the South Carolina Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case in which death-sentenced prisoners challenged the state’s electrocution and firing squad execution methods as unconstitutional, citing the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the state’s own Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, with the addition of corporal punishment for the latter. Deciding how to interpret cruel, unusual, or corporal has been an issue raised to the courts before, with South Carolina Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty stating prior to the beginning of oral arguments that “this is a case we’ve had more than once, we’ll have it again today, and I think we’ll probably have it again.”...