A jury in South Carolina sent a father to death row for killing his five children but when — or even if — Timothy Jones Jr. will be executed is unsure.
South Carolina has no drugs to carry out lethal Injections and companies refuse to sell them to prison officials.
After executing 18 prisoners from 2000 to 2010, South Carolina hasn’t put anyone to death since May 2011.
South Carolina also isn’t sending defendants to death row. Jones is only the third inmate to head to death row in the past 10 years.
Other states are seeing similar trends. Virginia has only three inmates on its death row. Oklahoma executed 112 prisoners starting in 1990, but none since using the wrong drug in a botched 2015 lethal injection.
