SC governors may intervene in death penalty cases. Have any of them done so?

Six South Carolina governors stood as the last word on whether a death sentence should be carried out.

Two Democrats. Four Republicans. Each said the courts had spoken. Follow the law. No clemency.

Gov. David Beasley, who served from 1995 to 1999, faced the question most often — 17 times — considering such cases as a man who killed a 17-year-old and then a 9-year-old and taunted their parents and another who carved KKK into a black woman’s body.

Gov. Jim Hodges, who served from 1999 to 2003, in an email asking him to comment on his decisions said, “The oath of office the governor takes is to uphold the law, and South Carolina law provides for juries to consider the death penalty in limited circumstances. I believe the juries carefully considered the facts and crimes before authorizing the death penalty in the cases I reviewed, and did not disagree with their conclusions.”

His office considered seven cases, including one in which a father drove the family minivan to his wife’s condominium, parked outside, doused the interior with gasoline and set it on fire. Inside sat their 2-year-old daughter restrained by her car seat.

“Most if not all of these cases had been tried before South Carolina juries multiple times due to procedural decisions by appellate courts,” Hodges said.

Then the Governor’s Office legal team reviewed all the court filings and any submissions by the lawyers for the inmates. He personally reviewed those filings as well.

“My memory is that all of these cases involved horrific murders that included significant aggravating circumstances,” he said. “There were not any issues that suggested innocence in the cases.”

Gov. Mark Sanford had 14 cases while in office. Govs. Richard Riley and Carroll Campbell had two each and Nikki Haley had one.

Campbell, who served from 1987 to 1995, died in 2005.

The other former governors did not respond to requests for comment.

Sanford told The State shortly after taking office in 2003, “I don’t have a problem with the death penalty. Some people do, and I respect their opinion, but it’s not mine.”

He promised his final hour reviews of cases would be the weightiest of his work.

Sanford served until 2011.

Despite his personal opposition to the death penalty, Riley did not commute the sentences of the first two men executed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled capital punishment must be proportional to the crime and is not in an of itself cruel and unusual.

During Riley’s tenure, Joseph Shaw and Terry Roach, convicted in the deaths of Thomas Taylor, 17, and Taylor’s 14-year-old girlfriend, Carlotta Hartness, in 1977, died in the electric chair in 1985.

Shaw also confessed to killing Betty Swank, 21, who was shot 12 days before the Taylor-Hartness killings. All three victims were from Columbia.