Death-row duo get to choose between the 109-year-old electric chair known as 'Old Sparky' or a firing-squad execution in South Carolina

• A South Carolina court blocked two executions, saying the men must get the choice of a firing squad.
• Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens were due to be executed by the electric chair this week.
• The ruling comes amid a lethal-injection shortage and the state's revised capital-punishment law.

A top court in South Carolina blocked two planned executions by electric chair this month, saying the two men could not be put to death until they had the choice of a firing squad.

The ruling was made under the state's newly revised capital-punishment law, which says the condemned must choose between electrocution or firing squad if lethal injections are not available.

Brad Sigmon, who was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat in 2002, was supposed to be killed on the state's 109-year-old electric chair named "Old Sparky" on Friday, The Times reported.

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The planned electric-chair execution of another man on death row, Freddie Owens, was set for June 25. Owens was convicted of murdering a convenience-store worker in 1997 and confessed at his sentencing to killing another prisoner.

South Carolina recently restarted executions after an involuntary 10-year pause that the state attributed to an inability to obtain the lethal drugs needed for them.

It now forces people on death row to choose between electrocution or firing squad if the drugs are unavailable.

"The department is moving ahead with creating policies and procedures for a firing squad," Chrysti Shain, a representative for the South Carolina Department of Corrections, said in a statement, according to The Guardian.

"We are looking to other states for guidance through this process. We will notify the court when a firing squad becomes an option for executions."

Attorneys for both men had said death by electrocution was cruel and the men should have the right to die by lethal injection. But the state's lawyers are saying prison officials are simply carrying out the law.

Prison campaigners say Sigmon is terrified at the prospect of being electrocuted. Alli Sullivan, a member of the anti-death-penalty group Death Penalty Action who recently spoke with him, said in a Facebook post: He "doesn't know if [he] can get the horror out of [his] mind of being fried to death," The Times reported.

South Carolina is among eight states, including Mississippi and Oklahoma, that still use the electric chair in executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Three other states allow death by firing squad.

Thirty-seven people are awaiting the death penalty in South Carolina, which saw its most recent execution in 2011.