South Carolina’s death row holds people convicted of murder who have received a death sentence and are working through years of appeals before an execution date is set. Men are housed in the Capital Punishment Unit at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia; the small number of women ever sentenced to death are held at Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution. After more than twelve years without an execution, the state resumed carrying out death sentences in September 2024, using a single-drug lethal injection protocol.
Where the Condemned Are Housed
Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia is where men under a sentence of death live.1South Carolina Department of Corrections. Institutions The Capital Punishment Unit is a maximum-security environment separated from the general prison population. Daily life involves extended confinement in individual cells, limited outdoor exercise, and visitation that typically takes place through glass barriers. Women sentenced to death are housed at Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution, though South Carolina has rarely had women on its death row in recent decades.
Who Can Be Sentenced To Death
A murder conviction by itself is not enough. After a jury returns a guilty verdict, the prosecution must prove at least one statutory aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt in a separate sentencing proceeding. Without that finding, the harshest available sentence is life imprisonment.2South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 16-3-20 – Punishment for Murder; Separate Sentencing Proceeding When Death Penalty Sought
The statute lists twelve aggravators. The ones prosecutors most often charge fall into a handful of groups:
- Murder committed during another serious felony, including kidnapping, criminal sexual conduct, armed robbery, burglary, arson, drug trafficking, or trafficking in persons.
- A prior murder conviction.
- Knowingly creating a great risk of death to more than one person in a public place with a weapon or device dangerous to multiple lives.
- Killing a law enforcement officer, judicial officer, solicitor, corrections employee, or firefighter in connection with official duties, or killing a family member of such officials to intimidate or retaliate.
- Murder for hire, or directing another person to commit murder.
- Murder of a child eleven or younger, or of a witness to obstruct a criminal case.
- Murder by someone classified as a sexually violent predator under state law.
Other listed factors include killing by poison, physical torture, and dismemberment. Even when an aggravator is proven, the jury must weigh it against mitigating evidence about the defendant’s background, mental health, or role in the crime before recommending death. If the jury does not recommend death, the judge imposes a life sentence.2South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 16-3-20 – Punishment for Murder; Separate Sentencing Proceeding When Death Penalty Sought
Two federal constitutional limits apply on top of the state statute. No one who was under eighteen at the time of the crime can be sentenced to death, under a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling grounded in the Eighth Amendment. People with intellectual disabilities are also exempt under a 2002 ruling; later decisions held that a rigid IQ cutoff is not enough, because IQ scores carry a margin of error, and any assessment must track the medical community’s diagnostic framework.
Methods Of Execution
South Carolina offers three methods: lethal injection, electrocution, and the firing squad. Act 43 of 2021 added the firing squad and reshaped the choice rules.3South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 24-3-530 – Executions The condemned person selects the method in writing at least fourteen days before the scheduled execution date. If no selection is made, the default is electrocution.4South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 24-3-530 – Death Penalty; Methods of Execution
If the Department of Corrections director certifies that lethal injection drugs are unavailable, the sentence is carried out by electrocution unless the inmate elects the firing squad. Any election expires if the person receives a stay of execution, and a new written election must be submitted fourteen days before any rescheduled date.4South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 24-3-530 – Death Penalty; Methods of Execution
In July 2024, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that both the electric chair and the firing squad are constitutional methods of execution.
Why Executions Stopped And Started Again
South Carolina’s last execution before the recent resumption was in May 2011. The state then went more than twelve years without carrying one out. The cause was practical: pharmaceutical companies refused to sell lethal injection drugs to the state, and at the time inmates had the right to choose lethal injection even when drugs were unavailable, creating an indefinite standoff.
Act 43 of 2021 was designed to break that logjam by making electrocution the default and adding the firing squad as an alternative. Drug supply remained the second problem. In May 2023, Governor McMaster signed a confidentiality statute making the identities of everyone involved in planning or carrying out an execution strictly confidential. The “execution team” is defined broadly to cover anyone who prescribes, compounds, manufactures, transports, supplies, or administers the drugs, medical supplies, or equipment used in an execution. Their identifying information cannot be obtained through discovery, subpoena, or other legal process in any state court or administrative body, and knowingly revealing a team member’s identity carries up to three years in prison and civil liability.5South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 24-3-580 – Execution Team and Drugs Used to Administer Death Sentence Confidential The law also exempts execution drug purchases from the state procurement code, letting the Department of Corrections acquire what it needs outside normal channels. After the law took effect, the department was able to secure the drugs needed to resume lethal injections.6South Carolina Office of the Governor Henry McMaster. South Carolina Now Prepared to Carry Out Death Penalty by Lethal Injection
Freddie Owens was executed on September 20, 2024, by lethal injection, using a single dose of the sedative pentobarbital rather than the three-drug protocol the state used before 2011. Richard Moore was executed by lethal injection on November 1, 2024. They were the first executions in South Carolina in over thirteen years.
The Appeals Process
A death sentence triggers a multi-layered review that typically takes years, often more than a decade. It moves through three stages.
Automatic South Carolina Supreme Court Review
Every death sentence is automatically reviewed by the South Carolina Supreme Court, whether or not the defendant files an appeal. The trial court clerk transmits the record within ten days of receiving the transcript. The court examines three questions: whether the sentence was influenced by passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary factor; whether the evidence supports the jury’s finding of a statutory aggravating circumstance; and whether the sentence is disproportionate compared to penalties imposed in similar cases. The court can affirm the sentence or set it aside, and a prejudicial error in sentencing can send the case back to a new jury for a fresh sentencing hearing. This automatic review is consolidated with any direct appeal the defendant files.7South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 16-3-25 – Punishment for Murder; Review by Supreme Court of Imposition of Death Penalty
State Post-Conviction Relief
Once the direct appeal is resolved, most death row inmates file for post-conviction relief under the Uniform Post-Conviction Procedures Act. This is a separate proceeding focused on issues that could not have been raised on the trial record alone. The most common claim is ineffective assistance of counsel: that the trial lawyer’s performance was so deficient it affected the outcome. These hearings involve live testimony, often from the original trial attorneys and expert witnesses, and can produce new evidence that was never presented to the jury.
Federal Habeas Corpus
If state proceedings fail, the final judicial avenue is a federal habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. A federal court will grant relief only if the state court’s decision was contrary to clearly established U.S. Supreme Court precedent or based on an unreasonable determination of the facts given the evidence presented. The federal court is not re-trying the case; it is asking whether the state courts made an error serious enough to violate the Constitution. Before filing, the inmate must exhaust all available state remedies; a federal judge will not consider the petition if a state step was skipped.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2254 – State Custody; Remedies in Federal Courts Federal law entitles financially eligible death row inmates to appointed counsel for habeas proceedings, and courts frequently appoint two attorneys given the complexity of capital litigation.
Executive Clemency
When the courts are finished, the last remaining possibility is clemency from the Governor. The South Carolina Constitution limits the Governor’s clemency power in capital cases to two actions: granting a temporary reprieve or commuting a death sentence to life imprisonment. The Governor cannot pardon someone on death row or reduce the sentence to anything less than life.9South Carolina Office of the Governor Henry McMaster. Pardons and Expungements Petitions are usually filed in the final days before a scheduled execution, after all judicial remedies are exhausted. Grants in capital cases are exceedingly rare. Both the Owens and Moore executions in 2024 proceeded despite public clemency appeals, including requests from former jurors and, in Moore’s case, a trial judge.