Lawyers for six death row inmates out of appeals in South Carolina are asking the state Supreme Court to give full consideration to the state's new lethal injection rules as well as the electric chair and firing squad before restarting executions after an unintended 12-year pause.
The inmates said judges should decide now if the state's new lethal injection protocol using just the sedative pentobarbital as well as killing prisoners by electrocution or shots fired into the heart do not violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishments.
