In a split ruling, the high court ruled the methods are neither cruel nor unusual, noting both are options for carrying out a death sentence.

“Choice cannot be considered cruel because the condemned inmate may elect to have the State employ the method he and his lawyers believe will cause him the least pain,” Justice John Few wrote in the lead opinion.

Similarly, he wrote, choices meant to make execution less inhumane can’t be considered unusual punishment: “A condemned inmate in South Carolina will never be subjected to execution by a method he contends is more inhumane than another method that is available.”

The ruling allows for at least five executions to be scheduled.

Those include the four men named in the lawsuit and at least one more inmate — possibly another — whose appeals have been exhausted while the case was pending, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Once the high court issues an execution notice, the prison agency by law must set the date for four Fridays later.

“We’ll just wait and see what the court does,” Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said after the ruling. “I’m carrying out the law, and that’s just my job.”

The law upheld by the ruling states the inmates will die in the electric chair unless they choose instead to die by firing squad or lethal injection. They must make the choice in writing 14 days before they’re scheduled to die.

Justice George James signed on to Few’s opinion, while the newest justice, Garry Hill, agreed in a separate opinion. Retiring Chief Justice Don Beatty, as well as John Kittredge — who becomes chief justice Thursday — each wrote separate opinions partially to mostly disagreeing.

Beatty, not surprisingly, offered the biggest contrast.

While the entire death penalty law isn’t unconstitutional, carrying out a sentence by electrocution or firing squad violate the state’s ban against cruel, corporal, or unusual punishment, he wrote.

Kittredge, perhaps most notably, determined the firing squad specifically is an unconstitutionally “unusual” method of execution.

The ruling overturns a 2022 decision from Richland County Judge Jocelyn Newman that found both methods unconstitutional.

Gov. Henry McMaster applauded the decision as upholding the rule of law.

“This decision is another step in ensuring that lawful sentences can be duly enforced and the families and loved ones of the victims receive the closure and justice they have long awaited,” he said in a statement.

The case was brought on behalf of condemned inmates — two as initially filed, two more were later added — challenging a 2021 law that reverted to electrocution as the default method of execution and added the option of death by firing squad.

At the time, the state was unable to carry out an execution because the Department of Corrections’ supply of lethal injection drugs had expired a decade earlier. Opposition to the death penalty had prevented the state’s prison agency from restocking them, as pharmaceutical companies refused to provide their drugs to kill people.

But the law kept lethal injection as an option if the drugs became available again, which has since happened.

A secrecy law passed last year — which keeps everything about lethal injection drugs secret, including who’s selling them — had the intended result. In September, Stirling informed the court the agency was able to buy phenobarbital, making death by lethal injection an option again.

In a hearing before the high court in February, the inmates’ attorney said justices still needed to decide whether the electric chair and firing squad should even be a choice.

Attorneys for the inmates did not immediately respond to a request Wednesday by phone and email for comment.

Like McMaster, Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey applauded justices’ ruling.

“Senate Republicans stood up for victims’ families and crafted this law to ensure that, while justice may have been delayed, it will not be denied,” said the Edgefield Republican.

It was the Senate that added the firing squad as a possibility during floor debate. But it was a Democrat who made the recommendation, which the chamber’s majority Republicans adopted.

Columbia Sen. Dick Harpootlian, a former solicitor and former state Democratic Party chairman, argued the firing squad would be a quicker, more humane way to die than either electrocution or lethal injection.

There are 33 men — 16 Black, 17 white — on South Carolina’s list of inmates sentenced to death, though one of them is on death row in California for crimes committed in that state.

The last execution in South Caroline was in 2021 by lethal injection.

No one has been sentenced to death in South Carolina since 2019, partially because the state has been unable to carry out the sentence. The oldest conviction for an inmate on death row dates to 1983.

SC Daily Gazette reporter Skylar Laird contributed to this report. 

SEANNA ADCOX