execution

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man sent to death row twice for separate murders has been put to death by lethal injection in the state’s sixth execution in nine months. Stephen Stanko was executed Friday for shooting a friend then cleaning out his bank account in Horry County in 2005. The 57-year-old inmate was serving another death sentence for killing his live-in girlfriend in her Georgetown County home hours earlier, strangling her as he raped her teenage daughter. Stanko was leaning toward dying by South Carolina’s new firing squad like the past two inmates before him. But after autopsy results from the last inmate showed the bullets nearly missed his heart, Stanko went with lethal injection.

A federal judge doesn't plan to stop the execution of South Carolina inmate Stephen Stanko because the convicted man's lawyers didn’t have evidence of problems with the state’s lethal injection process.

South Carolina death row inmate Stephen Stanko has chosen to die by lethal injection after his lawyers say he is troubled by what appeared to be a lingering death of the last person in the state who was killed by firing squad.

After his best friend and four other of his fellow death row inmates have been put to death in less than a year, a South Carolina inmate wants to become his own attorney which would likely mean his own execution in weeks or months.

An inmate sentenced to death twice in two South Carolina killings has been scheduled to be executed on June 13.

A pathologist hired by attorneys for death row inmates says a South Carolina man executed by firing squad was conscious and likely in extreme pain for as long as a minute. The autopsy results for Mikal Mahdi show the bullets meant to quickly stop his heart struck him lower than expected.

A firing squad on Friday executed a South Carolina man who killed an off-duty police officer, the second time the rare execution method has been used by the state in the past five weeks.

A few more details are known about South Carolina's firing squad as the state prepares to carry out its second execution by that method.

When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad.

A man who shot and killed an off-duty police officer in South Carolina is scheduled to become the fifth person executed in the state since the death penalty resumed last fall following a 13-year pause.