Notwithstanding any other provision of law, in any criminal trial where the maximum penalty is death or in a separate sentencing proceeding following such trial, the defendant and his counsel shall have the right to make the last argument.
S.C. Code Ann. § 16-3-28
Punishment for murder; right of defendant to make last argument
Applied in 10 court decisions — leading case State v. Franklin (1995)
Most recently applied in Brad Sigmon v. Bryan Stirling (April 2020)
1977 Act No. 177 SECTION 5; 1986 Act No. 462, SECTION 43.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: South Carolina Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Carolina statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.