Opponents of the new law decried it, saying the death penalty should be banned outright given its racist history.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill on Friday adding firing squads to the list of execution methods used to kill people sentenced with the death penalty. The bill passed the state legislature with vast support from Republican lawmakers earlier this month. South Carolina is now the fourth state in the country to allow execution by firing squad, joining Mississippi, Utah and Oklahoma. The new bill allows executions to resume in the state after a temporary hiatus brought about by a shortage of lethal injection drugs, which was the execution method chosen by all of the people in South Carolina’s death row currently slated for execution. The new bill makes electrocution the default method of execution, and the three people slated for execution next will be given the grisly option of choosing between a firing squad and electrocution for their means of death. South Carolina currently has a total of 37 people on death row. Lawyers for the men slated for execution are considering a lawsuit to dispute the bill, claiming that the new law is regressive, the Associated Press reports. Opponents have decried the law as inhumane in a time when many progressives and Democrats are advocating for the elimination of the death penalty altogether. South Carolina state Rep. Justin Bamberg, a Democrat, had fiercely criticized the bill before it passed the legislature, telling his fellow lawmakers that they “may as well be throwing the switch yourself” if they voted for the bill.
