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In a 66-43 vote, South Carolina House approved a bill to allow firing squads to execute prisoners. Governor Henry McMaster says that he will approve the bill once he receives it.
Democrat Representative Justin Bamberg urged his colleagues to vote against the measure.
“If you push the green button at the end of the day and vote to pass this bill out of this body, you may as well be throwing the switch yourself.”
The Senate already had approved the bill in March, by a vote of 32-11.
The House only made minor technical changes to that version, meaning that after a routine final vote in the House and a signoff by the Senate, it will go to Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who has said he will sign it.
According to The Guardian, 37 people in South Carolina on death row, and three have exhausted the appeal process.
South Carolina stopped receiving lethal injection drugs in 2013. The bill retains lethal injection as the primary method of execution if the state has the drugs, but requires prison officials to use the electric chair or firing squad if it doesn’t.
Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah also offer the execution method.
