COLUMBIA, S.C. – A condemned South Carolina inmate chose Friday to be executed by lethal injection, instead of by firing squad or electrocution, for killing a store clerk in 1999.
State prison officials had told Richard Moore this month he could choose the method for his Nov. 1 execution. State law had given him until Friday to decide or by default he would be electrocuted.
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The execution of Moore, who is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop it, would mark the second in South Carolina after a 13-year pause that began because the state could not obtain a drug needed for lethal injection.
Moore, 59, is on death row for the 1999 killing of clerk James Mahoney. Moore went into the Spartanburg County store, unarmed, to rob it and got into a shootout with the clerk after taking one of two guns from him, authorities said. Moore was wounded in the arm, and prosecutors said his blood was found on Mahoney’s body as he stepped over the clerk, looking for cash.
Moore, who is Black, is the only man on South Carolina’s death row to have been convicted by a jury that did not have any African Americans, his lawyers said. If he is executed, he would also be the first person put to death in the state in modern times who was unarmed initially and then defended themselves when threatened with a weapon, they said.
South Carolina Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said the state’s electric chair was tested last month, its firing squad has the ammunition and training, and the lethal injection drug was tested and found pure by technicians at the state crime lab, according to a certified letter sent to Moore.
Moore will be put to death under the state's new lethal injection protocol that uses one dose of pentobarbital, similar to the federal government’s execution method. The state had used three drugs for executions in the past.
Freddie Owens was put to death by lethal injection using the one drug on Sept. 20 after a shield law passed last year allowed South Carolina to obtain it. Before the privacy measure was put in place, companies refused to sell the drug. Owens showed no obvious signs of distress during the several minutes it took for him to stop breathing.
In the lead-up to his execution, Owens asked the state Supreme Court to release more information about the pentobarbital to be used to kill him. The justices ruled Stirling had released enough when he told Owens, just as he did Moore in early October, that the drug was pure, stable and potent enough to carry out the execution.
Moore's lawyers plan to ask for clemency, saying his sentence was too harsh since he didn’t go into the store with a gun and may have fired in self-defense. There was no surveillance video of the shootout. Moore’s attorneys also have pointed out he has no violations on his prison record and offered to continue to help rehabilitate other prisoners as long as he is behind bars.
Moore is also as involved as he can be in the lives of his children and now, his grandchildren, Moore’s son Lyndall said. “He’s mentored other young people. He’s a God-fearing man,” he said.
Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, has the sole power to grant mercy and reduce Moore’s sentence to life without parole. No South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of the death penalty.
Moore’s lawyers asked in federal court this week that a judge take the decision out of McMaster’s hands because the governor told reporters in 2022 he had no intention of commuting a sentence. But Judge Mary Geiger Lewis appeared skeptical of their arguments, and McMaster voluntarily signed a sworn statement saying he will fulfill his legal obligations.
Moore has had execution dates set twice in recent years before the state Supreme Court stopped them to consider the legality of the firing squad and shield law. In 2022, he opted for the firing squad, but that was before lethal injection was available.
A firing squad has been used for U.S. executions only three times in the past 50 years, all in Utah. The last time was in 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. And electrocution hasn't been used for U.S. executions in almost five years.
South Carolina has put 44 inmates to death since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it carried out an average of three executions a year. Nine states have put more inmates to death.
But since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled. The state had 63 condemned inmates in early 2011. It currently has 31. About 20 inmates have been taken off death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals. Others have died of natural causes.