SC attorney general joins push to speed up death row appeals process

COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s attorney general is supporting a federal proposal that would speed up the appeals process for death row inmates.

The proposed rule change would make it easier for states to get federal permission to set timelines for when prisoners in capital cases must file their appeals, as long as the states also provided attorneys to help them do so.

That removal of certain requirements to the application requirement would help speed up the lengthy appeals process in death row cases, top prosecutors from 16 states argued in a letter to the U.S. attorney general dated May 15, the last day of public comment for the potential rule change.

There is no timeline on a decision from the U.S. Department of Justice, which issued the proposal in March.

On average, death row inmates spend 21 years in prison before their executions as the courts consider their appeals, according to the letter. The same is true for the 22 men housed on South Carolina’s death row.

South Carolina’s longest-serving inmate, Jamie Wilson, has been there for 37 years, after being sentenced in 1989 for killing two 8-year-old girls in a Greenwood school shooting. A 2011 appeal in state court over whether Wilson is competent for execution has been pending since 2011, though the proposed rule change wouldn’t affect that part of the appeals process.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be stuck footing the bill for decades due to government red tape, and victims of the most heinous crimes deserve justice in a timely manner,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement.

Drawn-out court challenges undermine the purpose of doling out capital punishment, which is to deter future crimes and bring closure to victims’ families, the attorneys general argued. If an inmate was wrongfully convicted or sentenced, they deserve speedy justice as well, reads the letter led by Alabama Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“Delay in capital cases benefits no one except prisoners with meritless claims; they receive an unjust windfall,” he wrote.

Condemned SC inmate who believes he’s died repeatedly can’t be executed, judge rules

Since 1996, eight states have officially applied to the U.S. Department of Justice for certification to speed up the appeals process: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

South Carolina will join that list if the rule becomes final, enabling the change in process to actually occur, said Robert Kittle, spokesman for Wilson’s office.

Only one state’s application received approval: Arizona in 2020 under the first Trump administration. But the federal government revoked it a year later after anti-death penalty advocates challenged the decision in court.

Various court interpretations and federal rules added oversights too strict for states to use the expedited scheduling process as Congress intended in the 1996 federal law establishing it, the attorneys general argued. The federal government’s backtracking in Arizona’s case “sent the message to other states not to try,” the letter reads.

The Death Penalty Information Center, a national nonprofit critical of issues surrounding capital punishment, raised concerns that the proposed rule would result in worse representation for death row inmates.

The proposed rule would remove federal requirements for the attorneys the states must hire to represent inmates for their appeals, potentially allowing states to select attorneys who aren’t up to the task, the nonprofit wrote to the Department of Justice.

“Federal court review is essen­tial to ensur­ing that state con­vic­tions and death sen­tences are accu­rate, fair, and con­sti­tu­tion­al,” the nonprofit said in a statement May 18. “Limiting the scope of fed­er­al court review and impos­ing short­er fil­ing dead­lines on pris­on­ers only increas­es the risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tions and exe­cu­tions.”

Executions in South Carolina resumed in 2024 following a 13-year hiatus. What began as a pause because no inmates had reached the ends of their appeals processes became a halt in the process as officials struggled to get the drugs needed for lethal injections.

An ultimately unsuccessful court challenge over whether the firing squad and electric chair were constitutional methods of execution prolonged the pause further. Since September 2024, the state has executed seven people: Four died by lethal injection and three by firing squad.