Richard Moore, a man sentenced to death in a South Carolina court, chose to die in a firing squad instead of an electric chair.
Richard Moore’s death sentence is set to take effect on April 29, 2022, more than 20 years after he was sentenced to death. He made the decision on Friday.
Richard Moore Choose Death
South Carolina passed a law last year requiring people on death row to choose between three options.
- Fatal injection
- Electric chair
- Firing squad
Earlier, Moore’s execution date was set for last weekend, and he was given eight days to decide how he wanted to die. Moore will be the first person to be executed by a firing squad in South Carolina since 2011 – and the fourth person to be killed by a firing squad in the United States since 1967.
Defense attorneys have tried multiple legal means to prevent Moore’s death. Her lawyer recently argued that both alternatives in South Carolina are “ancient and barbaric.”
“I believe this is forcing me to choose between the two unconstitutional approaches to the death penalty, and I have opted for electric shock or firing squad,” Moore said.
South Carolina is one of four states where deaths are approved by firing squad. Ronnie Lee Gardner was the last person to be executed in the United States in 2010 in Utah. Three firing squads have been executed in Utah in the United States since 1967.
Oklahoma and Mississippi allowed the death by firing squad, but earlier this year Oklahoma rejected a one-man request for one. Instead, the state killed Donald Grant by lethal injection.
South Carolina prison officials say South Carolina last killed someone in 2011, leaving 35 people, all men, on death row indefinitely. Murray was the first person to force him to choose how to be killed.
Richard Moore Death History
Moore has been on death row since 2001, when a jury sentenced him to death for killing a clerk at a convenience store in a robbery. Moore entered Nike’s Speedy Mart in Spartanburg County in 1999 and planned to rob the store, but did not carry a firearm.
The man behind the counter, James Mahoney, pulled a gun when Moore tried to snatch him. Moore pulled the weapon away from Mahoney, who then pulled out a second gun. A gunfight ensued, with Moore fatally shooting Mahoney and leaving the store with just over $ 1,400 in cash.
Moore was also wounded in the shelling; Mohani shot him in the arm. Moore later wrecked his car and surrendered to police. He confessed to killing Mahni.
In the years that followed, Moore’s lawyers argued that his crime should not be a death sentence because he had entered an unarmed store, showing that he did not want to kill anyone. However, in a decision issued earlier this month, only one in five South Carolina Supreme Court judges agreed with that argument.