South Carolina complete execution of double murderer 20 years after his crimes

As reported in this AP piece, a “South Carolina man sent to death row twice for separate murders was put to death Friday by lethal injection in the state’s sixth execution in nine months. Stephen Stanko, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m.” Here is more:

He was executed for shooting a friend and then cleaning out his bank account in Horry County in 2005. Stanko also was serving a death sentence for killing his live-in girlfriend in her Georgetown County home hours earlier, strangling her as he raped her teenage daughter. Stanko slit the teen’s throat, but she survived….

Three family members of his victims stared at Stanko and didn’t look away until well after he stopped breathing….

Stanko was leaning toward dying by South Carolina’s new firing squad, like the past two inmates before him. But after autopsy results from the last inmate killed by that method showed the bullets from the three volunteers nearly missed his heart, Stanko went with lethal injection.

Stanko was the last of four executions scheduled around the country this week. Florida and Alabama each put an inmate to death on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Oklahoma executed a man transferred from federal to state custody to allow his death….

Stanko is the sixth inmate executed in South Carolina in nine months after the state went 13 years without putting an inmate to death because it could not obtain lethal injection drugs. The South Carolina General Assembly approved a firing squad and passed a shield law bill which allowed the suppliers of the drugs to stay secret.