COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Department of Corrections officials who will oversee executions by the electric chair and firing squad in South Carolina do not have the expertise to know how electric voltages or bullets affect the human body to the point of death, argue attorneys who represent three men awaiting their fates on death row.
Without that expertise, the lawyers say, state officials can’t know whether killing someone by electrocution or a bullet that splits into fragments used to cause “instantaneous” death won’t cause “unacceptable levels of mutilation and damage to the body.”
These arguments are at the center of a Richland County bench trial happening this week that will decide whether South Carolina’s execution law violates the state’s constitution — and whether the three inmates will be put to death.
