S.C. death row inmate files federal lawsuit to pause execution
COLUMBIA, S.C. - The man set to be executed Friday for a South Carolina murder case with Augusta ties is filing a federal lawsuit over the state’s execution practices.
Stephen Stanko filed the federal civil rights lawsuit on June 6 against the South Carolina Department of Corrections and the agency’s officials.
The lawsuit attacks South Carolina’s execution statute, which has been in place for five executions since September 2024, when the state began resuming executions after an over 10-year gap.
The statute places the electric chair, a method Stanko argues is archaic, as the designated method unless the inmate chooses lethal injection or firing squad.
South Carolina’s most recent execution was done via firing squad. Mikal Mahdi’s legal team filed a complaint after his April death, alleging his execution was botched.
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Stanko’s legal team claims the firing squad hit Mahdi with two bullets, and neither hit him directly in the heart, the intended target. The lawyers argue it should have been impossible for a trained shooter to miss Mahdi’s heart from five yards away.
Stanko’s lawsuit relies on various experts’ analysis of Mahdi’s death, including a trauma surgeon and expert on firing squads, Jonathan Groner.
Groner claims that because the left side of Mahdi’s heart was not hurt, his heart would have “continued pumping blood to the brain until the substantial supply of available blood was exhausted.”
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The South Carolina Supreme Court rejected Stanko’s request for more details on the firing squad, saying that Stanko’s lawyers failed to prove that the previous execution was botched.
Stanko selected to die by lethal injection but also claims that recent lethal injections have also had issues.
Stanko alleged that the three lethal injections since November of last year violated the state’s “single-dose pentobarbital” protocol. Stanko claims all three men who died by this method needed a second dose to die.
According to Stanko, a faulty insertion of the IV line or inadequate drugs could explain the second dose, but claims the state has not provided evidence to rule either out.
“To avoid, as one doctor has explained it, being burned at the stake by electricity, Mr. Stanko has had to choose between two methods that SCDC has shown they are unable—or unwilling—to competently conduct.” Joe Perkovich, one of Stanko’s lawyers, said.
Stanko is serving two death sentences for crimes he committed in April 2005 in Horry and Georgetown counties.
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On April 7, 2005, Stanko bound, beat and strangled his girlfriend Laura Ling to death while he beat and raped Ling’s daughter, who was a minor at the time, in their Murrells Inlet home.
Stanko also slit the daughter’s throat to try and kill her, but she survived.
Then, after Ling’s murder, Stanko drove to Conway on April 8 to the home of 74-year-old Henry Turner, who considered Stanko a friend. When Stanko was there, he shot and killed Turner, stole his truck and drove away.
Authorities arrested Stanko several days later in Augusta.
Stanko is hoping that his execution will be paused to give the federal court time to decide whether or not South Carolina’s execution practices violate the U.S. Constitution.
A hearing on Stanko’s lawsuit will be held Wednesday at 11 a.m. in Charleston.
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