15 June 2025 :
June 13, 2025 - South Carolina. Stephen Stanko, 57, White, was executed
By lethal injection
Stanko was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m.
He was executed for shooting a friend and then cleaning out his bank account in 2005.
Stanko also was serving a death sentence for killing his live-in girlfriend hours earlier, strangling her as he raped her teenage daughter. Stanko slit the teen’s throat, but she survived.
The execution began after a 3 1/2 minute final statement where Stanko apologized to his victims and asked not to be judged by the worst day of his life. Witnesses could hear prison officials asking for the 1st dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital which was different from previous executions.
Stanko appeared to be saying words, turned toward the families of the victims and then let out several quick breaths as his lips quivered.
Stanko appeared to stop breathing after a minute. His ruddy complexion quickly disappeared and the color drained from his face and hands. A prison employee asked for a 2nd dose of pentobarbital about 13 minutes later. He was announced dead about 28 minutes after the execution started.
Stanko was leaning toward dying by South Carolina’s new firing squad, like the past 2 inmates before him. But after autopsy results from the last inmate killed by that method showed the bullets from the 3 volunteers nearly missed his heart, Stanko went with lethal injection.
Stanko is the 6th inmate executed in South Carolina in 9 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.
Stanko becomes the 4th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in South Carolina, the 49th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on January 11, 1985, the 23rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,630th overall since the nation resumed executions in 1977. i.
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