South Carolina schedules first execution after transition to firing squads

[mountaineer]

South Carolina schedules first execution after transition to firing squads
April 8, 2022
Brad Dress

Less than a month after South Carolina authorities said they were ready to carry out executions by firing squad after transitioning away from lethal injection, the state has scheduled its first execution.

The South Carolina Department of Corrections announced on Thursday that death row inmate Richard Moore, 57, is scheduled to be executed on April 29.

Moore, who was convicted in 2001 of armed robbery and the murder of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg County in 1999, will have to choose within 14 days whether he wants to be executed by firing squad or electric chair.

Moore would be the first person executed in the state since 2011 after South Carolina paused executions following a halt of the use of lethal injection drugs, which the state has been unable to procure for legal use.

Last May, the state passed a law that codified execution by firing squad. Under the law, South Carolina’s primary means of execution is by the electric chair, but death by lethal injection and firing squad are options if they are available. ...

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Death row inmate asks S.C. judges to halt firing squad or electrocution
By The Associated Press
Published: Apr. 8, 2022 at 8:38 AM EDT|Updated: 2 hours ago

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina inmate set to die either by a firing squad or in the electric chair later this month is asking the state Supreme Court to halt his execution.

Lawyers for 57-year-old Richard Moore say he shouldn’t face execution until judges can determine if either method is cruel and unusual punishment. Moore is set to die on April 29 unless a court steps in.

He has until next Friday to choose between the South Carolina’s electric chair, which has been used twice in the past 30 years, or being shot by three volunteers who are prison workers in rules the state finalized last month.

South Carolina corrections officials finished updating the death chamber to prepare for executions by firing squad.

Moore has spent more than two decades on death row after he was convicted of killing convenience store clerk James Mahoney in Spartanburg.

Moore could face a choice between the electric chair and the firing squad, two options available to death row prisoners after legislators altered the state’s capital punishment law last year in an effort to work around a decade-long pause in executions, attributed to the corrections agency’s inability to procure lethal injection drugs. ... Rest of story