History of SC executions + abandoned boats on SC shores
Hey, everybody. It’s Chase Karacostas. Another Friday and another weekend of lovely weather is here.
This week, I’m telling you about something that I’m 100% sure you already know about: Daylight Saving Time ends Sunday!
SC’s clocks will flip back, despite a new SC law that was passed to make Daylight Saving Time (the period from March to November where we have more daylight at the end of the day) permanent. Here’s why. Plus, if you want some more background on this weird trend, how it affects our lives (including how it’s bad for our health) and why we can’t seem to get rid of it, I recommend listening to this week’s episode of The Argument, a podcast from The New York Times. You can listen to it almost anywhere for free.
Here’s what else went on this week in the Palmetto State.
1. An investigation into the 303-year history of executions in SC
Death penalty cases, understandably, often focus on the person being put to death, but on the other side of each of those executions is a person carrying out the deed. The task isn’t easy, and for the former South Carolina executioners The State spoke to, it can haunt someone forever.
- One of those people, Craig Baxley, prayed in a bathroom on his knees and begged God for forgiveness after every execution, convinced he had been condemned to hell for an act he felt like represented evil.
- Since 1976, when the nationwide ban on executions was overturned, South Carolina has executed 43 people.
- Executions stopped in 2017 when the state ran out of lethal injection drugs, but the legislature has taken several steps to bring capital punishment back. What will happen when it does?
Read The State’s series from investigative reporter Chiara Eisner Secrets of the Death Chamber. Part one, on how executions nearly destroyed the lives of the executioners themselves, and part two, on the three-century history of the state’s executions, are out now.
2. In flood-prone Charleston, a historic downtown hospital decides it must move
A 163-year-old Charleston hospital has decided to leave its longtime home on the city’s peninsula as flooding plagues the city, a problem that could only get worse as natural disasters hit the coast with increasing frequency.
As part of its 10-year strategic plan, Roper St. Francis Healthcare said Wednesday that it must relocate its flagship hospital from its current downtown location, The State’s Caitlin Byrd reports.
- Roper Hospital is located on Calhoun Street in Charleston’s flood-prone medical mile, where chronic flooding impacts three major health systems: Roper St. Francis, the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center and the Medical University of South Carolina, the region’s only Level I trauma center.
“Who we are has always been more important than where we are,” Roper St. Francis CEO Dr. Jeffrey DiLisi said in a video published on the health system’s website. The new location, the hospital system hopes, will also be more convenient to the communities it serves.
3. USC admin never planned to ask SC lawmakers to rename Thurmond building, emails show
“Don’t they know that we weren’t planning to ask?”
That’s what Interim USC President Harris Pastides said in response to statements from S.C. lawmakers about how they wouldn’t allow a vote on renaming university buildings named after slave owner and segregationist U.S. Strom Thurmond.
- Pastides’ statement came in an email, obtained by through the state Freedom of Information Act, after months of public efforts that made it seem like the university was considering asking for the buildings to be renamed. Pastides even chaired the committee that recommended earlier this year that the buildings be renamed.
- Long before that recommendation, however, the university had already prepared public statements saying both the state’s Heritage Act and lawmakers prevented them from changing the controversial building names.
If there were never any plans to change the names of those buildings, what was the point of the commission? Are the name changes dead in the water now? The State’s Lucas Daprile has the latest on what could happen next.
4. Boats are being abandoned on SC’s shores. Why?
When I heard about how dozens of boats are abandoned each year along South Carolina’s coast, I couldn’t really believe it. Boats are expensive, I thought, why would someone just ditch one? Yet, it happens with more regularity than you might think.
- In Horry County alone, there are at least 20 abandoned boats scattered around various waterways, but there are likely more hidden in less easy-to-find places.
- Who’s abandoning them? Oftentimes the boats are 50-60 years old, nearing the end of their usable life, and end up suffering a mechanical failure while on the water or get beached and left behind. Sometimes, though, boat owners will find places where there are other abandoned boats and ditch them there, creating a graveyard of rotting ships.
- The boats are an environmental hazard. Fiberglass hulls deteriorate and release microplastics into the water around them. Those with treated wood leech harmful chemicals into the water.
What’s being done about these boats? The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources works with nonprofits and boat-towing organizations to get these vessels out of the water, but the process is expensive, and there isn’t any state money designated for dealing with this.
Read my piece on South Carolina’s abandoned boat problem and who’s working to combat it.
5. 7 earthquakes in 7 days: Earthquakes haunt tiny South Carolina community.
Jenkinsville, a small town north of Columbia, has been struck by seven earthquakes in a week, but they are just a few of thousands of tremors recorded in the area since engineers built nearby Lake Monticello in 1978.
None of the recent quakes were considered large, and there hasn’t been any damage reported as a result of them. But the frequency of the tremors is making some wonder whether more or are on the way, and if there will eventually be one big enough to damage property or threaten public safety, The State’s Sammy Fretwell reports.
What I’m reading
- Haunting: Is there a real-life ghost story in Chester? A former South Carolina jail there gives some people the spooks, The Herald’s Tobie Nell Perkins reports.
- Last month, I told you about damage to a bridge in the Island Green neighborhood of Horry County that was concerning residents. The Sun News’ Dale Shoemaker found out about it thanks to a video one of the neighborhood’s residents took. But last week, that resident was arrested for trespassing after the neighborhood’s developer pressed charges.
- An amazing find: Archaeologists recently uncovered a hearth from Hilton Head Island’s Mitchelville, the first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States.
That’s all for today. If you don’t already, subscribe to The State here. If you’re already a subscriber (thanks!), download our iOS or Android app to get connected.
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This story was originally published November 5, 2021 at 2:55 PM with the headline "History of SC executions + abandoned boats on SC shores."
