South Carolina's return to executions, including by firing squad

Overview · reviewed November 12, 2026

South Carolina resumed executions in September 2024 after a pause of 13 years, once its Supreme Court upheld its methods.^[1]^[2] In 2025 it carried out the first execution by firing squad in the United States in 15 years.^[3]

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In 2025 it carried out the first execution by firing squad in the United States in 15 years.^[3]

Coverage over time

Share of tracked outlets · monthly average of weekly shares (UTC)

LeftCenterRight

Each bar is the share of the outlets on our Left / Center / Right rating scale that we tracked publishing that week which carried reporting on this story, split by the outlets' ratings. Over more than two years each bar is a month: the average of that month's weekly shares, so the shape stays readable. The weekly table below keeps every week. We track more outlets now than in the archive, so a share keeps earlier and later weeks comparable. An outlet counts once a week however much it published, and outlets in one ownership or syndication group count as one on each side they appear on. A rating describes the outlet, not the report. A gap means no such reports were collected that week, not that nothing was reported anywhere. Weeks run Monday to Sunday in UTC, so a report published on a Sunday evening in US Eastern time counts in the next week. 3 more outlets off the scale (not rated, or outside the left-right graphs) also reported; they are not in this chart. See them.

Weekly counts, outlets and reports (20 weeks with coverage)

Outlets on the rating scale that carried this story each week, of the outlets tracked that week, newest first
Week of (UTC)	Left	Center	Right	Of tracked	Share
Nov 9, 2026 (so far)	0	2	0	2 of 473	under 1%
Sep 7, 2026	0	2	0	2 of 480	under 1%
Nov 10, 2025	3	4	2	9 of 188	5%
Jun 9, 2025	5	2	1	8 of 199	4%
May 5, 2025	2	2	2	6 of 201	3%
Apr 7, 2025	1	10	0	11 of 194	6%
Mar 3, 2025	10	18	8	36 of 202	18%
Feb 17, 2025	5	5	5	15 of 194	8%
Jan 27, 2025	1	3	4	8 of 223	4%
Oct 28, 2024	5	10	4	19 of 196	10%
Sep 16, 2024	2	15	4	21 of 209	10%
Aug 19, 2024	3	0	3	6 of 209	3%
Jul 29, 2024	3	5	6	14 of 228	6%
Feb 5, 2024	2	2	2	6 of 242	2%
Sep 18, 2023	0	2	2	4 of 233	2%
Sep 5, 2022	5	4	2	11 of 192	6%
Apr 18, 2022	10	15	3	28 of 185	15%
Apr 11, 2022	6	17	6	29 of 192	15%
Apr 4, 2022	4	5	3	12 of 191	6%
Mar 14, 2022	12	17	8	37 of 183	20%

Latest coverage

The newest reporting in this story's record.

Nov 10, 2026 · first reported · Headline from WCBD News 2
After years of appeals, South Carolina says Bixby execution should proceed

Background

South Carolina had gone a decade without an execution by early 2022. That March, it readied a firing squad as an alternative to the electric chair and scheduled its first execution with that option.^[4]^[5]^[6] The inmate, Richard Moore, chose the firing squad over the electric chair, but the state Supreme Court temporarily stayed the execution.^[7]^[8] In September 2022, a judge ruled that the firing squad and the electric chair were unconstitutional.^[9]

Read the full background (2 more paragraphs)

Executions resumed after the courts cleared the way. In September 2023, the state said it had obtained a drug to resume lethal injections after an unintended 12-year pause.^[10] In July 2024, the state Supreme Court ruled that its death penalty, including the firing squad, was legal.^[2] Freddie Eugene Owens died by lethal injection that September in the state's first execution in 13 years,^[1] and Moore was executed that fall despite broadly supported pleas to reduce his sentence to life.^[11]

Several inmates then chose the firing squad. Brad Sigmon chose it and in March 2025 became the first person executed by that method in the United States in 15 years.^[12]^[3] Mikal Mahdi was executed by firing squad five weeks later.^[13] A pathologist hired by lawyers for death row inmates said the bullets had mostly missed Mahdi's heart.^[14] Stephen Bryant was executed by firing squad in November 2025.^[15] In November 2026, the state urged the South Carolina Supreme Court to reject death row inmate Steven Vernon Bixby's request to delay the issuance of an execution notice.^[16]