Execution scheduled for SC inmate with 2 death sentences

COLUMBIA — A condemned inmate is scheduled for execution in one of his two death penalty cases, the state Supreme Court said in a Friday order.

Stephen Stanko, 57, is set to be put to death at 6 p.m. June 13. His execution would be the sixth in the state since the process resumed in September following an unintended 13-year hiatus.

Stanko was sentenced to death twice, in two separate cases for crimes committed within two days of each other in 2005.

The U.S. Supreme Court turned down his final appeal for a 2009 conviction earlier this month. Appeals are ongoing in his other death sentence, which a jury recommended as part of a 2006 conviction.

By law, Stanko will have until May 30, two weeks before he’s set to die, to choose his method of execution.

The death warrant comes as attorneys raise questions about the state’s protocols for execution by firing squad, an option added by legislators in 2021. Two inmates in the last two months chose to die that way.

In the most recent execution, which took place April 11, marksmen mostly missed inmate Mikal Mahdi’s heart, attorneys claimed.

An autopsy photo showed two bullet holes in his chest where attorneys would have expected three, one from each gun shot at him, attorneys said in a filing to the state Supreme Court last week.

Prison officials have said nothing went wrong. Fragments of bullets struck Mahdi’s heart, and two bullets hit the same spot and took the same trajectory through his body, explaining the two wounds, said prisons spokeswoman Chrysti Shain.

Stanko also has the option to die by lethal injection, which three of the five inmates executed in the last eight months chose, or electrocution, which no inmate in the state has selected since 2008.

Stanko’s crime spree started April 7, 2005, when he strangled his girlfriend, Laura Ling, to death at her home in Murrell’s Inlet while beating and raping her 15-year-old daughter, according to court documents. Stanko slit the daughter’s throat and left her for dead before stealing jewelry and credit cards and fleeing.

He went to his friend’s house in Conway. After having breakfast with his friend Henry Turner, Stanko shot the 74-year-old in the back while he shaved in the bathroom mirror, using a pillow as a silencer for his gun, according to court documents.

Stanko then hit Turner in the head and fatally shot him in the chest.

Driving Turner’s truck, Stanko went to Columbia, where he spent an evening buying people drinks at bars before traveling to Augusta, Georgia. There, Stanko convinced a woman he was a businessman in town for the Masters golf tournament and went home with her, according to court records.

Stanko stayed with the woman, including attending church with her, until April 12, when he left abruptly in the middle of the night. Soon after he left, the woman recognized his photo in the newspaper alongside a headline about Turner’s death and called the police, who captured Stanko before he left the city, according to court records.

During Stanko’s trials, defense attorneys argued to no avail that he was insane at the time of the killings, with decreased brain functioning making him unable to understand right and wrong.

A jury convicted Stanko in 2006 of killing Ling and beating and raping her daughter. A separate jury convicted him in 2009 of killing Turner. Both juries recommended death sentences, which multiple courts have affirmed.

Turner’s killing is the crime for which Stanko is set to be put to death in June.