COLUMBIA, SC (AP) – It is unknown how long the execution of Richard Bernard Moore, the first South Carolina prisoner to be killed by gunfire, will be delayed as his lawyers pursue legal challenges.
But Moore’s death sentence, originally scheduled for April 29, has revived interest in how a state is implementing plans to shoot a prisoner to death. The method is used only in a handful of states and has not been used in the United States for more than a decade.
South Carolina just introduced the shooting option last year, giving convicted prisoners a choice between it and an electric shock caused by their inability to obtain lethal injectable drugs.
When choosing the firing squad, the 57-year-old Moore said he did not recognize 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 was obliged to do so. choice .
Moore was sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of store employee James Mahoney in Spartanburg. Planning to rob the money store to support his cocaine habit, investigators said Mahoney pulled out a gun that Moore managed to pull out and use to shoot the employee.
The date of the May 13 execution was also set for another prisoner, Brad Sigman, although a U.S. judge is considering his legal argument that both the electric shock and the shooting were “barbaric” methods of killing.
Only three executions in the United States have taken place since the 1976 shooting, according to the Washington-based nonprofit, the Death Penalty Information Center. Moore’s will be the first since the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010 by five Utah firing squads.
WHEN DID THIS PROCESS BEGIN?
South Carolina – once home to one of the nation’s busiest death chambers – has been unable to carry out any of the 2011 executions, an involuntary break attributed by officials to the state’s inability to provide the tribunal of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection. The convicted prisoners had a choice between injection and electric shock, which means that choosing the former would essentially leave the state incapable of enforcing the sentence.
For several years, lawmakers considered adding the firing squad as an option to approved methods, but the debate never progressed. Last year, Democratic Sen. Dick Harpullian and GOP Sen. Greg Hambry, both former prosecutors, again spoke out in favor of adding the shooting option.
“The death penalty will remain the law here for a while. If it stays, it must be humane, “Harpoulian said, saying the firing squad had provided a more humane alternative to an electric shock if the executions continued in the Republican-dominated state.
The move, which Republican Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law last May, made South Carolina the fourth state in the country to allow the use of a firing squad, according to the Washington-based organization for information on the death penalty.
HOW IS THE PERFORMANCE IMPLEMENTED?
Following the bill, the South Carolina Corrections Division is working to upgrade its existing death chamber in Columbia – where executions by lethal injection and electric shock have been carried out for more than 30 years – to meet the needs of the firing squad.
The agency spent $ 53,600 on government funding for repairs, including the installation of bulletproof glass between the death chamber and witnesses, as well as a metal chair in which the prisoner will be tied. They also cut through the brick wall of the cell to make a hole through which the three shooters – all volunteers from the Correctional Division – would pierce their weapons, all loaded with ammunition.
The opening is 15 feet from the convict, located in the corner of the room, according to a note published last month by the prison agency. While the prisoner will be visible to witnesses, officials said the shooters and their weapons were missing.
The electric chair, which officials say cannot be removed from the camera, will be covered in place between the glass wall and the shooting squad’s chair.
After the opportunity to make a final statement, the prisoner will be tied to a chair and placed with a hood on his head. A member of the execution team will place a “small target” over the prisoner’s heart.
After the warden read the execution order, officers said the team would fire. The agency does not specify what caliber the volunteer shooters will use, nor details of the “defined qualifications” they will have to meet.
WHO WILL BE THERE TO WITNESS HIM?
In addition to the civil servants in the execution chamber, the execution may be attended by three media witnesses, as well as three witnesses from the victim’s family, according to the Correctional Department.
State law also allows for religious and legal advisers to the prisoner, as well as law enforcement officials and local prosecutors.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
As is standard on all South Carolina executions, a doctor will examine the prisoner and make a death declaration. A photo posted by law enforcement officials shows a metal basin with lips under the prisoner’s chair, as well as a rectangular box just behind it, potentially to take the shot.
Immediately afterwards, the witnesses will be taken out of the room and taken to the building of the Headquarters of the Penal Decrees, where other media will be gathered.
Out of sight of witnesses, the prisoner’s body was removed from the camera and taken away by the Richland County Coroner’s Office for autopsy before being returned to the prisoner’s family.
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