After 42 years on death row, South Carolina inmate dies of natural causes

COLUMBIA, S.C. — 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

COLUMBIA, S.C. — 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.”

Death row inmate Fred Singleton.South Carolina Department of Corrections via APBut 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.