Overview

• Stephen Stanko, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. on June 13 at Broad River Correctional Institution after receiving lethal injection.
• He was sentenced to death for the 2005 rape of his girlfriend’s 15-year-old daughter, the strangulation of his girlfriend and the shooting of 74-year-old Henry Lee Turner.
• Stanko selected lethal injection over South Carolina’s new firing squad and electric chair after autopsy reports flagged issues with the firing-squad method.
• In a final statement read by his attorney, he apologized to victims’ families and asked that he not be judged solely by his worst actions.
• His execution was the fourth in the United States this week and the sixth carried out in South Carolina in the past nine months.