South Carolina judge refuses to block 2 scheduled executions

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. (Kinard Lisbon/South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File) (Kinard Lisbon, South Carolina Department of Corrections)

COLUMBIA, S.C. ā€“ A South Carolina judge on Tuesday refused to block two executions set for later this month as she considers a lawsuit over the stateā€™s new capital punishment law, which effectively forces condemned prisoners to choose to die by either the electric chair or firing squad.

State Circuit Judge Jocelyn Newman issued the decision to let the planned executions of Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens proceed after their attorneys had argued in court that the men should not be executed while the lawsuit is pending.

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The two ā€œhave little likelihood of success on the merits of their claim,ā€ Newman wrote.

If the executions proceed as scheduled, Owens and Sigmon would likely die in the stateā€™s electric chair, as prisons officials say they canā€™t get hold of lethal injection drugs and have yet to put together a firing squad.

The lawsuit was filed shortly after Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law the bill aimed at restarting executions after an involuntary 10-year pause that the state attributes to an inability to procure lethal injection drugs. Lethal injection remains the default method, but the new law compels the condemned to choose between electrocution and a firing squad if drugs arenā€™t available.

Attorneys for the two men say they canā€™t be electrocuted or shot since they were sentenced under a prior law that made lethal injection the default execution method.

Both Sigmon and Owens are also seeking to block their scheduled deaths by electrocution in federal court, where they argue electrocution is cruel and inhumane and that state officials arenā€™t trying hard enough to obtain lethal injection drugs. A court hearing on that challenge is set for Wednesday.

Three men, including Sigmon and Owens, have run out of traditional appeals in recent months, leaving the state Supreme Court to set and then stay execution plans after the corrections agency said it didnā€™t have lethal injection drugs.

The South Carolina Supreme Court reset Sigmonā€™s execution for June 18 after prison officials indicated the stateā€™s electric chair was ready for use. The court scheduled Owens to die a week later, on June 25.

Sigmon, 63, was convicted in 2002 of killing his ex-girlfriendā€™s parents with a baseball bat in Greenville County.

Owens, 43, was first sentenced to death in 1999 for the shooting murder two years earlier of a convenience store clerk during an armed robbery, also in Greenville County. He changed his legal name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah in 2015, according to court filings.

South Carolina is one of eight states to still use the electric chair and four to allow a firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Prison officials have not indicated a timeline for when the firing squad would be up and running, though they have said they are researching how other states operate their squads.

South Carolinaā€™s last execution took place in 2011, and its batch of lethal injection drugs expired two years later. There are 37 prisoners on death row in South Carolina, all of them men.

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Liu is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.