SC lawmakers introduce bill to make electric chair default method of execution

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) – South Carolina lawmakers introduced a bill to in the House of Representatives Thursday (1/11) that would bring back the electric chair as the default method of execution.

The Bill, titled H416, would mandate that a person convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death shall suffer the penalty by electrocution. It continues that the person could elect lethal injection, if it is available at the time of election.

Currently South Carolina is facing a shortage of the drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection.

Representative Michael Pitts, Republican from Laurens, introduced the bill Thursday. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate on Tuesday by Senator William Timmons, Republican from Greenville. Both bills have been referred to committee.

Three people have been executed by the electric chair in the last 20 years in South Carolina; the last was in 2008. The last person to be executed by lethal injection was in 2011.