COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Supreme Court has issued an execution date for a death row inmate suing the state over a new law forcing inmates to choose between a firing squad or the electric chair.
Court documents show Freddie Owens' execution is scheduled for June 25. Owens shot and killed a convenience store clerk in 1997.
The court notice comes less than a week after the Supreme Court set an execution date for another man on death row, Brad Sigmon. A lawsuit filed by attorneys for both Owens and Sigmon earlier this month argue they can’t be electrocuted or shot because he was sentenced under an old law that made lethal injection the default execution method.
It's not yet clear when that suit will be heard in court.
The death penalty is legal in South Carolina but no one on death row has been executed since 2011. That was because of an inability by the state to get the drugs necessary to execute inmates by lethal injection.
But the South Carolina General Assembly passed a new law earlier this year that aimed to bypass that problem by offering inmates the option of death by either the electric chair or firing squad. Gov. Henry McMaster signed the measure into law, saying it's necessary to give families justice.
Death penalty opponents say both methods of killing are inhumane.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections said after the law was signed that it is still working on creating protocols for a firing squad, so that option is not available right now for executions, meaning the only option for Sigmon would be the electric chair.
The corrections department's website says 284 executions have been carried out by the state since 1912.