Richard Bernard Moore, 57, is also the first state prisoner to be given a choice of execution techniques following the passage of a bill last year that made electrocution the default method of execution and gave inmates the option of facing three prison guards with firearms instead.
Moore has been on death row for more than two decades after being convicted of the 1999 slaying of Spartanburg convenience store clerk James Mahoney. If he is executed on April 29, he will be the first person in the state to be executed by firing squad since 2011, and the fourth in the country in nearly half a century.
According to the Washington-based charity Death Penalty Information Center, only three people have been executed by firing squad in the United States since 1976. Moore’s execution would be the first since Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a five-man firing squad in Utah in 2010.
According to the foundation, South Carolina is one of eight states that still uses the electric chair and one of four that allows a firing squad.
Moore claimed in a written statement that while neither method was legal or constitutional, he was more strongly opposed to death by electrocution and only chose the firing squad because he was forced to.
The state’s new law was triggered by a decade-long halt in executions, which officials blame on an inability to obtain the medications required for lethal injections.
Moore’s lawyers have requested the Texas Supreme Court to postpone Moore’s execution until another court examines whether one of the two options is cruel and unusual punishment. The lawyers claim that prison officials aren’t making enough effort to obtain lethal injection medications, instead forcing inmates to pick between two more cruel procedures.
His lawyers are also requesting that the Louisiana Supreme Court postpone the execution so that the United States can intervene. The Supreme Court can decide whether his death sentence was excessive in comparison to other offenses. A similar appeal was dismissed by the state judges last week.
Moore’s supporters argue that his crime isn’t serious enough to warrant the death penalty. Moore’s attorneys argue that because he didn’t bring a gun inside the business, he couldn’t have intended to kill anyone when he entered.
Jeffrey Motts, who was on death row for strangling a cellmate while serving a life sentence for another murder, was the last person executed in South Carolina.
