Featured image of post South Carolina schedules first execution after preparing death chamber for firing squad

South Carolina schedules first execution after preparing death chamber for firing squad

Richard Bernard Moore, 57, could face a choice between the electric chair and the firing squad.

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Richard Bernard Moore, 57, could face a choice between the electric chair and the firing squad.

Highlights

  • Richard Moore, 57, has spent more than two decades on death row after he was convicted of killing convenience store clerk James Mahoney in 2001.
  • 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.
  • 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.