If executed as scheduled on April 29, Richard Moore would be the first person put to death in the state since 2011.
Highlights
- Richard Moore, 57, is the first state prisoner to face the choice of execution methods after a law went into effect last year making electrocution the default.
- The new law was prompted by the decadelong break, which corrections officials attribute to an inability to procure the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections.
- Moore has spent more than two decades on death row after being convicted of the 1999 killing of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg.
- Moore’s attorneys have asked the state Supreme Court to delay his death while another court determines if either available method is cruel and unusual punishment.
- In the case of a firing squad execution, three volunteer prison workers will train their rifles on the condemned prisoner’s heart.