South Carolina Uses New Execution Drug

The 14th Execution of 2011

This week South Carolina executed Jeffrey Motts at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. He was the first person to be executed in South Carolina in two years and the first to be put to death using a new drug, pentobarbital, in the three-drug execution protocol, according Reuters.

Soon after his conviction, Motts began writing to the South Carolina Supreme Court asking to forgo all appeals and be put to death. In April, the state Supreme Court, having found him mentally competent to make the decision to die, granted his wish.

Motts had been convicted in 1997 of the robbery and murders of his great-aunt and another relative in South Carolina. Motts was sentenced to death in 2007 for strangling inmate Charles Martin after a verbal altercation in their cell at Perry Correctional Institution in upstate Greenville County, South Carolina.

Motts chose to have a spiritual advisor, who is a volunteer for Death Row inmates at the prison, with him in his final hours, according to Reuters.

Between 3:30 and 4 on Friday afternoon, Motts was served his last meal of pizza, fried fish, popcorn shrimp, French fries, cherry cheesecake and sweet tea. In his last words, he apologized to the families of his three victims and his own family and warned children away from drugs.

"I was the child everyone wanted their children around until I got on drugs," Motts said. "Drugs will destroy your life," reported Reuters.

To read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-execution-south-carolina-idUSTRE7456SK20110506