Court’s decision on executions leaves all in SC with blood on their hands | Opinion

South Carolina might as well bring back broad daylight lynchings in the public square and sell concessions like popcorn. That would make as much sense as the South Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday that all of the state’s execution methods are constitutional.

Under the new ruling, the state can kill a person in a premeditated manner if they do it through firing squad, the electric chair or lethal injection — as long as no one knows who is providing the state with the lethal drug combination designed to stop the prisoner’s heart.

The death row inmate can choose between those three methods. Their body, their choice.

Associate Justice John Few wrote in the majority opinion: “The state did not ‘inflict’ an ‘unusual punishment’ as the section prohibits. Rather, the state gave inmates a choice, and ‘choice’ is not ‘unusual’ under our constitution.”

What wonderful logic in “pro-life” South Carolina. As long as the inmate is given a choice in how the state will murder him, it’s all good — despite the state Constitution prohibiting “cruel” and “corporal,” not just “unusual,” punishment.

When the case was argued in February, Few at least acknowledged the barbarity of state-sponsored premeditated murder.

According to The State, Few said at the time: “Even the lawful killing of a man by the state is a gruesome endeavor. It’s going to be an awful procedure, and there are issues with the firing squad, electric chair — even lethal injection. So let’s enact a statutory scheme that once this condemned man faces the eventual prospect of execution.... (he) gets to choose his preferred method.”

Fine. If you want to accept this incredible logic, then the condemned must have more than three choices. Why not bring back lynchings in the public square? Why not something else equally absurd? Let them choose to be run over by a series of monster trucks at Darlington Raceway just before the Southern 500. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people would gather at these events, some bringing picnic baskets and blankets to sit on in the grass. The crowd might be extremely large, nearly 50,000, which would send a clear message that the way to disincentive murder is to… murder.

Isn’t that the point of all of this anyway? We are supposed to be sending a message, to make people think twice before doing something heinous. Then why not make executions a live event?

And yes, I said lynchings. Anti-Black things — even lynchings — don’t only affect Black people. There were some white lynchings also, as well as Asian lynchings. All were barbaric. The death penalty is a relic of that era.

Given that South Carolina’s state Supreme Court has so bastardized the meaning of “cruel” that it can’t even be applied to purposefully frying a man with electricity, shooting him in the heart, or filling his veins with drugs, no method can be considered cruel.

Research has shown us time and again that the death penalty is not an effective crime deterrent, and that according the Death Penalty Information Center, 200 death row inmates nationwide have been exonerated after a conviction since 1973.

But why should we care about such small details? Because this stopped being about justice long ago, or it never has been about justice.

Executions don’t bring back the lives taken by horrific criminal acts. They can’t undo wrongdoing. They neither make us safer nor better than the 32 men on the state’s death row. All they do is leave more of us with blood on our hands.