A man sentenced to death in South Carolina has chosen the firing squad over the electric chair, making him the state’s first death row inmate to be executed by firing squad.
Richard Bernard Moore, 57, would also be the first person executed in South Carolina in more than a decade, due to the state’s inability to get the medicines needed for lethal injection.
Moore, who was sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of a convenience store worker, will be put to death on April 29.
Moore selected death by firing squad in a court filing Friday, but said in a statement that he will not give up hope in two outstanding judicial challenges to the state’s capital penalty techniques.
“I think that this election is forcing me to choose between two unconstitutional means of death, and I have no intention of waiving any challenges to electrocution or firing squad by voting,” he stated in a statement.
According to the filing, he was not given the option of lethal injection because South Carolina lacked the requisite medications. The state has not had a usable dose of fatal injection chemicals since 2013, the department previously told CNN.
Moore’s attorney, Lindsey Vann, told CNN on Friday that they had requested the state Supreme Court to put the execution on hold so they can appeal his conviction to the US Supreme Court.
The South Carolina legislature approved a law last year making electrocution the state’s principal method of execution, while death row inmates can opt for a firing squad or lethal injection if those alternatives are available.
Moore’s appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court, which claimed his death sentence was disproportionate to penalties issued in similar cases, was refused on April 6.
Moore’s attorneys had previously requested a stay of execution for 2020, claiming that the state was attempting to carry out his death behind a “cloak of secrecy in the midst of a global epidemic,” citing other states that have postponed executions due to the pandemic. It was turned down.
South Carolina is one of four states that permits firing squad executions, along with Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Utah.