Free Republic

South Carolina’s highest court will hear arguments Thursday on whether a newly organized firing squad or the old electric chair are legal ways to execute inmates in the state, which has been unable to obtain drugs for lethal injections. A lower court judge ruled in September that South Carolina lawmakers “ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency” when they passed a law effectively forcing condemned prisoners to choose between electrocution or the firing squad. The state appealed and the South Carolina Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday over whether the 2,000-volt electric chair or the...

This is the sixth in a series of articles analyzing the federal grand jury indictment charging lawyer Michael Sussmann with making a materially false statement to the FBI’s General Counsel. The indictment spelled out Sussmann’s involvement in a thus-far uncharged conspiracy to create a false narrative that was calculated to demonstrate a secret channel of internet communications between the Trump Organization and the Russian Alfa-Bank. Recently Sussmann’s lawyers moved for a bill of particulars alleging that the indictment lacks sufficient detail and clarity for their client to prepare his defense. Special Counsel John Durham’s brief in opposition pointed out that...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (FOX 46 CHARLOTTE) – The U.S. District Court of South Carolina denied Friday an injunction filed by two death row inmates scheduled for execution starting next week. Death row inmates Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens asked the court to find the electric chair to be declared cruel and unusual punishment violating the 8th amendment to the U.S. constitution. The case stems from Governor McMaster adding firing squad to the state’s execution methods except the firing squad is yet to be created and lethal injection is arguably unavailable. So Sigmon and Owens are set to die by the only...

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill into law over the weekend that would require death row inmates to choose their execution method if lethal injections are not available in the state.The measure will allow the state to restart executions after nearly a decade-long pause, adding firing squads as an alternative method. A bipartisan group of lawmakers pushed the bill forward earlier this year and voted 32–11 in favor on March 2.According to the new law, death row inmates will have to choose between the electric chair or the newly formed firing squad. The state Senate bill will keep...

The Wisconsin medical center where 57 vials of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine were discarded earlier this week said in a statement Wednesday that the employee who had removed the vaccines from the freezer had done so "intentionally" and was no longer employed by the hospital....

The Trump administration is rushing to make a number of federal regulatory changes before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20, ProPublica reported on Wednesday. One of those changes, proposed by the Department of Justice, would allow some federal death-row inmates to be executed by means other than lethal injection. Many states allow for electrocution or a firing squad if lethal injection is not available or if another method is preferred by the prisoner.

He killed his grandmother. And he did so brutally, dumping her in the water before she was even dead, if the coroner is correct that her cause of death was drowning. He killed two others -- all evil acts. And then once in prison, he managed to kill a fellow inmate. So, I get why the governor of Tennessee refused to grant Nick Sutton clemency when the time came for his execution and final appeals. But no one was asking for the man to be released. Instead, people -- including prison staff and the sister of the inmate he killed...

A blind prisoner convicted of killing his estranged girlfriend by setting her on fire in her car was put to death Thursday in Tennessee's electric chair. Lee Hall, 53, became only the second inmate without sight to be executed in the U.S. since the reinstatement of the nation's death penalty in 1976. Hall was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. at a Nashville maximum-security prison, prison officials said. He chose the electric chair over Tennessee's preferred execution method of lethal injection — an option available to inmates in the state who were convicted of crimes before January 1999. He also became...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A former U.S. Marine whose DNA ties him to a 1976 homicide near a California military base was arrested last month in Louisiana after he was tracked down through genealogy websites, authorities said. Eddie Lee Anderson, 66, was arrested May 24 at his home in River Ridge, a suburb of New Orleans. According to Orange County Sheriff’s Department officials, he remains jailed in Plaquemines Parish on suspicion of murder in the May 17, 1976, slaying of Leslie Penrod Harris. Harris, 30, was found dead by military policemen around 4:30 a.m. the following day on a roadway...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - S.C. senators have revived a proposal to bring back the electric chair for the state’s death row executions, as well as add firing squads as an execution option. The proposal passed the state Senate by a 26-13 vote Wednesday, split mostly along party lines. It now heads to the S.C. House, where a similar proposal died last year. Backed by Senate Republicans, the bill is an attempt to address the S.C. Corrections Department’s inability to carry out executions because it does not have the chemicals needed for lethal injections. Drug companies won’t sell the state the chemicals,...

<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- A Tennessee inmate's final words were "let's rock" moments before he became the first man executed in the electric chair in that state since 2007, put to death for the killings of two men during a drug deal-turned-robbery decades ago.</p>

Attorneys for a Tennessee death row prisoner were trying to spare him from lethal injection and they succeeded — but not the way they hoped. Instead of getting the needle, Edmund Zagorski is scheduled to die in the electric chair on Nov. 1. If the execution goes forward, he will be only the second person to be executed that way in Tennessee since 1960. His case illustrates how hard it is for states to find ways to execute prisoners that courts will deem humane; the challenge attorneys face trying to save their clients from execution; and the frustration of some...

Are Louisiana lawmakers ready to bring back the gas chamber, hanging, firing squad or electrocution as options for carrying out the state's death penalty? Attorney General Jeff Landry says he will push for those changes if Louisiana can't figure out how to get its lethal injection protocols back on track. Executions in the state are on hold and will be for at least another year as part of a legal battle and efforts to find a drug manufacturer or pharmacy that will sell them the products needed to carry out executions. Louisiana hasn't put a prisoner to death since 2010...

Hillary Clinton deserves being tried for treason and potentially executed, according to Sebastian Gorka, President Trump’s former deputy assistant. Mr. Gorka made the comment during an interview Thursday evening with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity as the two discussed Mrs. Clinton’s role authorizing the sale of Canadian mining firm Uranium One to Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom while serving as the Obama administration’s secretary of state. “The Russians infiltrated our national security to corner the uranium market and they succeeded, and they knew all the crimes that were committed,” Mr. Hannity said during the broadcast. “If this had happened in...

Human rights campaigners warn action is needed to stop use of unlicensed drugs or other legally unsatisfactory methodsHuman rights groups have welcomed news that pharmaceutical firm Pfizer is to block the sale of its drugs in the US to perform executions, but warned that legally dubious alternatives could take their place. All companies licensed by the US government to manufacture drugs for state executions have now blocked their use in lethal injections. Pfizer’s withdrawal follows a campaign targeting pharmaceutical companies and their shareholders. The company said: “Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we...

A bill that would force condemned inmates to die by the electric chair if the state can't find lethal injection drugs is one step closer to final approval in Virginia. [...] The bill sailed through the GOP-dominated House last month. A spokesman for Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, has declined to say whether he would support the bill. ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee has decided how it will respond to a nationwide scarcity of lethal injection drugs for death-row inmates: with the electric chair. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law Thursday allowing the state to electrocute death row inmates in the event prisons are unable to obtain the drugs, which have become more and more scarce following a European-led boycott of drug sales for executions. Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the electric chair legislation in April, with the Senate voting 23-3 and the House 68-13 in favor of the bill. Tennessee is the first state to...

Tennessee has decided to bring back the electric chair. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam on Thursday signed a bill into law allowing the state to electrocute death row inmates in the event the state is unable to obtain drugs used for lethal injections. […] Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to enact a law to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option. …

Somewhere, Elin Nordegrin is sorry she didn't think of this An Islamorada resident who says she was informed by friends that her husband was having an affair confronted him with the other woman and attacked her husband with a golf cart. You know what they say: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and rolling quietly at 12-14 miles per hour. Islamorada resident Anna Marie Reckwerdt, 41, has been charged with battery and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after the incident about 10 p.m. Saturday night. Reckwerdt arrived at her husband's Overseas Highway business, Robbie's Marine, to find...

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan to get the “Electric Chair” from our wonderful U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder; “I Didn't Pay A Penny Out Of Pocket For My Power Chair", says Hassan. All of the other Gitmo 9/11 suspects face the same benefits.