COLUMBIA, SC (AP) – A South Carolina prisoner planned to be the first man executed in the state in more than a decade has decided to die by shooting rather than in an electric chair later this month, according to court documents filed in Friday.
Richard Bernard Moore, 57, is also the first U.S. prisoner to face the method of execution since a law came into force last year that makes a default electric shock and allows inmates to face three inmates with rifles.
Moore has spent more than two decades on death row after being convicted of the 1999 murder of store employee James Mahoney in Spartanburg. If executed on April 29, he will be the first person killed in the state since 2011 and the fourth in the country to die in nearly half a century.
The new law was triggered by a decade-long hiatus, which correction officials attribute to the inability to obtain the drugs needed to make lethal injections.
In a written statement, Moore said he did not acknowledge that either method was legal or constitutional, but that he was more strongly opposed to death by electric shock and chose only shooting because he had to make a choice.
“I believe that this election is forcing me to choose between two unconstitutional methods of execution, and I do not intend to give up any challenges to electric shock or shooting by making elections,” Moore said in a statement.
Moore’s lawyers asked the state’s Supreme Court to postpone his death, while another court determined whether any of the available methods was a cruel and unusual punishment. Lawyers say prison officials are not doing enough to get the deadly injecting drugs, instead forcing inmates to choose between two more barbaric methods.
His lawyers are also asking the state Supreme Court to postpone the execution so that the US Supreme Court can determine whether his death sentence is a disproportionate punishment compared to such crimes. State judges rejected a similar complaint last week.
South Carolina is one of eight states still using the electric chair and one of four that allow shootings, according to the Washington-based nonprofit death penalty information center.
Only three executions in the United States have taken place since the 1976 shooting, according to the nonprofit. Moore’s will be the first since the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010 by five Utah firing squads.
The South Carolina Corrections Agency said last month that it had completed the development of execution protocols and completed a $ 53,600 repair of the Columbia death cell by installing a metal chair with restraints facing wall with a rectangular opening of 15 feet (4.6 meters). In the event of execution, three volunteer prisoners will train their rifles on the convicted prisoner’s heart.
Moore is one of 35 men sentenced to death in South Carolina. The state last scheduled Moore’s execution in 2020, which was later postponed after prison officials said they could not receive lethal injectable drugs.
During the trial against Moore in 2001, prosecutors said Moore entered the store to seek money to support his cocaine habit, and got into an argument with Mahoney, who pulled out a gun that Moore pulled out of.
Mahoney pulled out a second pistol and a shootout ensued. Mahoney shot Moore in the arm and Moore shot Mahoney in the chest. Prosecutors said Moore left a blood trail in the store as he searched for money, crossing Mahoney twice.
At the time, Moore claimed he was acting in self-defense after Mahoney pulled out his first gun.
Moore’s supporters argue that his crime does not rise to the level of the death penalty. His appeal attorneys said that because Moore had not brought a gun into the store, he had no intention of killing anyone when he entered.
The last person executed in South Carolina was Jeffrey Motts, who was sentenced to death for strangling a cellmate while serving a life sentence for another murder.
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Liu is a member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national non-profit service program that accommodates journalists in local newsrooms to report on issues that are not covered.
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