Court demands more info in South Carolina death penalty case

By JAMES POLLARD
Associated Press/Report for America

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A circuit court must get more information from the South Carolina Department of Corrections regarding the agency’s attempts to acquire lethal injection drugs. The Thursday order from the South Carolina Supreme Court means it could be four more months until justices decide whether a newly organized firing squad or the old electric chair are legal methods of execution. Four condemned prisoners have challenged a 2021 law that forced them to choose between the electric chair or a newly formed firing squad. South Carolina’s batch of lethal injection drugs expired in 2013. The justices say state lawyers failed in oral arguments to answer how or when South Carolina officials had sought the drugs.