The South Carolina Department of Corrections said last month that it spent about $ 53,000 to renovate a death cell in a prison on the outskirts of Columbia by installing bulletproof glass between the camera and the witness room. A spokeswoman for the prison agency said prisoners who choose the shot squad would be tied to a chair and hooded. Three prison guards then fired rifles into the man’s heart.
The agency made the repairs after South Carolina lawmakers identified electric shock as a new default enforcement method. The bill was sponsored by Republicans, but one of the lawmakers who suggested an alternative to the shooting was U.S. Sen. Dick Harpullian, a Democrat and former prosecutor who said he did it because he thought the electric chair was inhumane.
“I believe the shooting is much more instantaneous, much less painful,” Mr Harputlian said.
He said he supported the death penalty only in the most extreme cases and believed Mr Moore should not be killed.
“I don’t think he falls into the category of ‘worst of the worst,'” Mr Harputlian said. “If I had brought the case, I would not have sought a death sentence.
Mr. Moore did not have a gun when he entered Nikki’s Speedy Mart, a convenience store in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, around 3 a.m. on September 16, 1999. At one point, he and store vendor James Mahoney engaged in a dispute. and Mr. Moore shot him with a pistol he kept behind the counter from the store owner. Mr Moore, who was shot in the arm during the brawl, fled after grabbing a bag of money worth about $ 1,400. A court jury convicted Mr Moore in 2001 and recommended that he be executed.
Mr Moore’s lawyers had previously asked the state’s Supreme Court to rule that the death sentence in his case was extreme, noting that he had entered the store without a gun and that there were conflicting allegations about what had led to it. the dispute between the men. The court rejected that argument, although a judge, Kay Hearn, vehemently disagreed, saying the state system for reviewing death sentences was “violated” and that he said Mr Moore’s sentence was disproportionate to his crime.
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