A South Carolina inmate who spent 42 years on death row has died of natural causes at a prison hospital, according to the state Department of Corrections. Fred Singleton, 81, was sentenced to die in 1983 for raping and strangling a woman in Newberry County and stealing her jewelry, according to court records. He was the state's longest-serving inmate on death row, per the AP.
Singleton spent his last three decades in prison in legal limbo after the state Supreme Court ruled he wasn't competent to be executed because he didn't understand he could die in the electric chair and only answered questions from his attorneys with "yes" or "no." But the justices also decided in 1993 that Singleton's death sentence should remain in case advances in psychology allowed him to get better, and that he couldn't be forced to take medication to improve his mental state only so he could be executed. Prosecutors said Singleton broke into the home of 73-year-old widow Elizabeth Lominick in 1982 and strangled her with a bedsheet after sexually assaulting her.
Singleton's death leaves 24 men on South Carolina's death row, down from 48 at the end of 2014. South Carolina has executed six inmates since then, all in 2024 or 2025. The others off death row have either had convictions overturned and been resentenced, or died of natural causes. The longest-serving inmate now on death row is Jamie Wilson, 56, who has been there for 34 years.
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