South Carolina’s longest-serving death row inmate dies of natural causes after 42 years in prison

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — 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.

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. Two of her sisters and her niece found her body. She had been strangled with a bedsheet. Singleton’s fingerprints were found on the screen to a bathroom window.

When Singleton was arrested in Georgetown County, he had Lominick’s diamond and gold rings in his pockets and her car, with Singleton’s fingerprints in it, was found nearby, police said.

Singleton’s death leaves 24 men on South Carolina’s death row. The state had 48 inmates on death row 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.

Wilson killed two 8-year-old girls and injured several other teachers and students in a 1988 shooting at a Greenwood County elementary school.

Wilson is in a similar legal limbo to Singleton. Wilson was considered mentally ill at the time of his trial. He had a competency hearing in 2011, but the judge apparently has not issued a ruling in his case.