South Carolina Passes Bill To Allow Executions Via Firing Squad, First Death Row Inmate To Stand Before It May Be In 2 Weeks

The clerk of the State Supreme Court has set a April 29 execution date for Richard Moore, a 57-year-old man who has spent more than two decades on death row after he was convicted of killing convenience store clerk James Mahoney in Spartanburg.

Moore could face a choice between the electric chair and the firing squad, two options available to death row prisoners after legislators altered the state's capital punishment law last year in an effort to work around a decade-long pause in executions, attributed to the corrections agency's inability to procure lethal injection drugs.

The new law made the electric chair the state's primary means of execution while giving prisoners the option of choosing death by firing squad or lethal injection, if those methods are available.

The state corrections agency said last month it had finished developing protocols for firing squad executions and completed $53,600 in renovations on the death chamber in Columbia, installing a metal chair with restraints that faces a wall with a rectangular opening 15 feet away.

In the case of a firing squad execution, three volunteer shooters - all Corrections Department employees - will have rifles loaded with live ammunition, with their weapons trained on the inmate's heart. A hood will be placed over the head of the inmate, who will be given the opportunity to make a last statement.