S.C. executes two in 2009

The Death Penalty Information Center released a report on executions across the country last year, and South Carolina isn’t exactly going through death row at a fast clip. The Palmetto State put two prisoners to death last year, as did Florida, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Missouri and Indiana both had one on the record, while Texas topped out everybody with 16. That total likely would have been higher if sentencing rules hadn’t been changed in 2005 to allow life without parole.

Overall, fewer people are getting the ultimate penalty and facing the lethal injection table — electric chairs and gas chambers have been largely filtered out.

“There’s a sense that, yes, we support [capital punishment] philosophically,” Richard Dieter, executive director of the DPIC, said to NPR. “But practically, this is a government program that isn’t working.”

The issue seems to be exonerations of prisoners in recent years. Because of that, juries are less likely to pass a death sentence. There’s also the issue of the cost of keeping someone on death row, which has been an issue in the controversy for decades.

Overall, since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in the ’70s, South Carolina ranks ninth among all states in executions. The state’s first execution of the New Year will be on Jan. 8. The man, Quincy Allen, stands convicted of killing two men and the attempted murder of another. He also assisted in the stabbing of a prison guard in December.

UPDATE: Right on time, the S.C. Supreme Court announced a stay of Allen’s sentence.