Stephen Stanko Obituary, Death; – A man from South Carolina, who was sentenced to death twice for different murders, was executed on Friday via lethal injection, marking the state’s sixth execution in nine months.
Stephen Stanko, aged 57, was declared dead at 6:34 p.m. He was put to death for fatally shooting a friend and subsequently draining his bank account in Horry County in 2005.
The execution commenced following a 3 1/2 minute final statement in which Stanko expressed remorse to his victims and requested not to be judged solely by the worst day of his life. Prison officials then requested the initial dose of the potent sedative pentobarbital.
Stanko seemed to utter some words, turned towards the victims’ families, and then took several rapid breaths as his lips trembled. After approximately one minute, Stanko appeared to cease breathing. A prison staff member requested a second dose of pentobarbital about 13 minutes later. He was pronounced dead roughly 28 minutes after the execution began.
Stanko was also serving a death sentence for the murder of his live-in girlfriend in her Georgetown County residence just hours prior, where he strangled her while assaulting her teenage daughter. He slit the throat of the teenager, who fortunately survived.
Initially, Stanko was inclined to choose execution by South Carolina’s newly implemented firing squad, similar to the last two inmates executed. However, after autopsy findings from the previous inmate executed by that method revealed that the bullets from the three volunteers had narrowly missed his heart, Stanko opted for lethal injection instead.
He was the last of four executions scheduled across the nation that week. Florida and Alabama each executed an inmate on Tuesday, while Oklahoma executed a man on Wednesday who had been transferred from federal to state custody to facilitate his execution.
Federal courts dismissed Stanko’s final attempt to avoid execution, as his attorneys contended that the state was not administering lethal injection correctly, following autopsy results that indicated fluid in the lungs of other inmates executed in that manner.
Additionally, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster denied clemency in a phone call to prison officials just minutes before the execution commenced. No governor has spared a death row inmate in South Carolina since…
