Death penalty opponents have been making stops in South Carolina to speak out about why they feel the firing squad shouldn't be used.
FILE - This March 2019, file photo, provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state's electric chair in Columbia, S.C. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law last week a bill that would essentially restart the state's stalled death penalty after a lack of lethal injection drugs has delayed several executions. The new law would let condemned inmates choose between the electric chair or a newly formed firing squad.
“He knew how gruesome the firing squad would be,” Randy Gardner told The Associated Press on Friday. “But he thought, well, he killed someone with a gun, and he thought he deserved the same treatment.” “For me and many people like me, appeals are the worst torture imaginable,” Risher, who wants Dylann Roof's death sentence overturned, said in a release. “Every time this case is in the news ... I am brought right back to that terrible day and the searing pain of the weeks, months and years that have followed.”
Two inmates who've exhausted their appeals immediately sued, saying they can’t be electrocuted or shot since they were sentenced under a prior law making lethal injection the default method. “It’s actually a bit of surprise to me that it has taken states this long,” Abe Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action's executive director, told the AP, of jurisdictions' addition of execution methods, due to drug unavailability.