CHARLESTON, S.C. — South Carolina courts gave Richard Moore eight days to decide exactly how he wants to die, and on Friday he made his choice.
Moore, who has been on South Carolina’s death row for 21 years, is scheduled for execution on April 29. By state law, the 57-year-old Spartanburg man had to determine which execution method will be responsible for ending his life: the state’s 110-year-old electric chair or a three-man firing squad.
Moore picked the newest option offered by the state, the firing squad. Lethal injection was not an option.
In a written statement accompanying his decision, Moore said he did not believe or concede that either method of execution before him was legal or constitutional.
In the same statement, Moore said settled on a death by firing squad because he more strongly opposes death by electrocution.
“I believe this election is forcing me to choose between two unconstitutional methods of execution, and I do not intend to waive any challenges to electrocution or firing squad by making an election,” Moore said.
Moore is South Carolina’s first state prisoner to face such a choice after a state law went into effect last year that makes electrocution the default method of execution and also gives inmates the option to choose whether they would rather face three volunteers with rifles instead.
The General Assembly passed the law in 2021 after the S.C. Department of Corrections said it had been unable for years to procure the drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection.
Though the legislation passed both chambers, there was serious divide among lawmakers about the seriousness of sending someone to a firing squad.
“It’s not right,” state Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg, said during debate on the floor at the time as he fought and ultimately failed to remove the retroactive nature of the bill. “It’s not constitutional. We don’t need to do it.”
In the Senate, Republican S.C. Sen. Greg Hembree, of Horry County, conceded that the bill would likely draw lawsuits. “If we pass the bill,” Hembree predicted on the floor of the Senate last year, “the very first execution we have is going to be litigated probably to the United States Supreme Court.”
When South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a former prosecutor and former U.S. attorney, signed the bill into law, he welcomed the legislation. “The families and loved ones of victims are owed closure and justice by law,” McMaster wrote in a tweet at the time. “Now, we can provide it.”
Moore is facing the death penalty for a murder committed during a 1999 convenience store robbery.
In 1999, Moore walked, unarmed, into Nikki’s Speedy Mart convenience store in Spartanburg County with the goal to rob it to buy cocaine. He confronted the store clerk, James Mahoney, who had a gun and the two got into a fight.
During the scuffle, the gun went off and killed the store clerk. Moore, who gained control of the gun, fired a shot at a bystander but missed.
He was later involved in a car accident after leaving the crime scene, and, when a police officer arrived, Moore got out of his truck, laid down on the road, and said, “I did it.” A Nikki’s Speedy Mart cash bag containing $1,408 was recovered from the truck.
During a 2001 trial presided over by former state Judge Gary Clary, then-prosecutor Trey Gowdy sought and won the death penalty. Moore did not dispute his guilt.
The jury of seven women and five men took just two hours to convict Moore of murder, armed robbery, possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime and assault with intent to kill.
The jurors could have recommended a sentence of life in prison without parole, but two days after convicting Moore of murder, they took just over an hour to sentence him to death. He was 36 at the time of the trial.
Moore’s attorneys have challenged the state’s execution methods, arguing in court filings that the firing squad law cannot be applied retroactively to him and that the two execution methods currently offered in South Carolina constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under the U.S. Constitution.
Lindsey Vann, attorney for the plaintiffs who brought the case against the S.C. Department of Corrections, said it’s up the state Supreme Court now whether a stay will be issued delaying Moore’s execution as his case moves through the court system.
“The electric chair and the firing squad are antiquated, barbaric methods of execution that virtually all American jurisdictions have left behind,” Vann wrote in a motion filed last week.
When Moore was sentenced to death in 2001, South Carolina had only two methods of execution, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Moore said.
Moore’s attorneys have also challenged the state’s contention that the option of lethal injection is “unavailable,” leaving Moore to choose between being shot or electrocuted.
Attorneys for S.C. Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling and S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, both named as defendants in the case, argued that inmates are not entitled to choose their preferred method of execution beyond what state law allows.
In an affidavit submitted as part of the case, Stirling refuted the allegations put forward by Moore’s attorneys, saying the Corrections Department has contacted manufacturers in attempts to purchase the drugs needed for lethal injection.
All the manufacturers contacted by the state agency, Stirling said, have “refused to sell the drugs to the Department.”
“The Department has also contacted various compounding pharmacists regarding compounding the drugs for the Department, but those efforts also have been unsuccessful,” Stirling said in his affidavit. “Additionally, the Department has attempted to purchase the bulk components for the drugs and have them compounded, and those efforts have likewise proven unsuccessful.”
On Thursday, a Richland County court judge agreed to a request by the Moore’s lawyers to closely examine those claims that the S.C. Department of Corrections cannot secure lethal injection drugs, leaving the electric chair and the firing squad as the only options for capital punishment.
The decision means attorneys for Moore and three other South Carolina death row inmates represented in the suit can move forward with a case that could get South Carolina’s new firing squad and century-old electric chair declared unconstitutional.
“This issue has never been decided by a South Carolina court before,” Judge Jocelyn Newman said in her decision. “To dismiss would be to tell Richard Moore, Freddie Owens, Brad Sigmon and Gary Terry that it’s not enough for a court to entertain before the court has to decide.”
The state Supreme Court has already allowed executions to go forward under the current options of death offered to the defendants.
Last week, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that Moore qualified for the death penalty since his killing was committed during what became an armed robbery. Supreme Court Associate Justice Kaye Hearn was the lone dissent.
In her opinion, Hearn said Moore was clearly not the “worst of the worst” for whom the death penalty is intended.
In March, the state’s corrections department notified the courts that the firing squad was ready for use should an inmate choose that method. Executions are carried out at the agency’s Broad River Correctional Institution outside of downtown Columbia.
The agency spent about $53,600 on supplies and materials to make the changes and comply with state law.
All firing squad members will be volunteers, but their decision to participate could still have lasting effects. Last year, The State published a series of stories that revealed for the first time that the closer South Carolina execution workers were to the act of killing, the more mental and physical pain they experienced.
The series also reported an unprecedented level of secrecy around the current execution practices of the Department of Corrections. Though execution teams in South Carolina have historically consisted of fewer than 10 people, last year, more than 100 were made to sign repressive confidentiality agreements that restricted their ability to talk about executions with people beyond that group.
If executed as scheduled, Moore would be the first person put to death in the state since 2011.
South Carolina is one of eight states that still use the electric chair, and one of four states that allow a firing squad.
Currently, there are 35 people on South Carolina’s death row. All of them are men.
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