South Carolina Execution Practices are Shrouded in Secrecy

As South Carolina prepares procedures for carrying out executions via firing squad, an investigation by Columbia's daily newspaper, The State, reports that important information about the execution process and the sources of materials to be used in executions is being hidden from the public.

The state legislature passed a bill in May 2021 making the firing squad and electric chair the two means of execution in the state. However, the state has denied journalists’ requests for information about its execution preparations and is requiring employees involved in executions to sign confidentiality agreements. Taylor Smith, a lawyer representing the South Carolina Press Association and its member newspapers, said, “When the government tells you, ‘You don’t need to know this information,’ bad things are usually hiding behind that curtain.”

South Carolina has not released their protocols for carrying out executions by any method, including electrocution, even though the state has executed more than 200 people with the electric chair and it is now the default method of execution. When pressed by journalists, state officials released redacted documents showing how much had been spent on preparations for executions by firing squad, including the purchase of rifles, ammunition, ballistic glass, armored plates, construction materials and other items. However, the state withheld all information related to the source of the items.

The South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC) defended its secrecy policies, asserting that documents related to the execution process are “security plans or devices” exempt from disclosure under state law. Frank Knaack, the former executive director of the South Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union told The State that: “Since any upcoming executions will be done on behalf of the state’s residents, the people have an absolute right to know every detail about what’s happening in their name, so that we can make informed public policy decisions going forward.”

Oklahoma Governor Rejects Board Recommendation for Clemency for Bigler Stouffer, Federal Courts Deny Execution Stay

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has denied clemency for death-row prisoner Bigler Jobe Stouffer II (pictured, at his clemency hearing), rejecting a pardons board recommendation to commute his sentence to life without parole. The governor’s decision, announced on December 3, 2021, paves the way for Oklahoma to execute Stouffer on December 9. If the execution proceeds, it will be the eleventh and final execution of 2021.

On November 17, 2021, the Oklahoma Pardons and Parole board voted 3-2 to recommend clemency for Stouffer based in part on concerns raised by the state’s botched execution of John Grant on October 28, 2021. It was the state’s first execution since botching the executions of Clayton Lockett in April 2014 and Charles Warner in January 2015 and then aborting the execution of Richard Glossip in September 2015.

“That process is obviously flawed,” said Board member Larry Morris, a retired probation officer, who voted for clemency in Stouffer’s case. “We have had individuals on the table suffering for 20 and 30 minutes apiece. And I don’t think that any humane society ought to be executing people that way until we figure out how to do it right.”

Governor Stitt did not explain his grounds for rejecting the Board’s recommendation, writing in an executive order only “I have thoroughly reviewed the arguments and evidence presented in this case and have determined that clemency should be denied.”

In an order issued December 6, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit also rejected arguments that Grant’s execution provided grounds to grant Stouffer a stay. Accepting the testimony of state anesthesiologist Dr. Ervin Yen that Grant was unconscious and insensate during a fifteen-minute period in which media witnesses reported that he experienced more than two dozen full-body convulsions and vomited, the appeals court said Stouffer had “failed to establish a threat that he will be irreparably harmed by a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights if he is executed using Oklahoma’s three-drug protocol.” The court’s order never once mentioned the words “convulsions” or “vomit,” instead describing Grant as having experienced a “brief period” of “regurgitation and respiratory distress” after purportedly losing consciousness.

Stouffer’s lawyers said they would appeal the circuit court’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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