Death row inmate forced to choose how he will die
Ben Thompson
Featured Image Credit: South Carolina Department of Corrections / Rob Crandall / Alamy Stock Photo
A prisoner on Death Row was given the choice on how he will be executed.
Richard Bernard Moore has been imprisoned for over twenty years for the murder of James Mahoney, a convenience store clerk.
Mahoney was shot dead in September 1999, leading to Moore being sentenced to death for his murder in October 2001.
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Moore had entered the store unarmed, however the convenience store’s clerk, James Mahoney, was carrying a gun.
The two struggled and Moore was shot in the arm by Mahoney. Getting hold of Mahoney’s gun, Moore returned fire, hitting Mahoney in the chest and fatally wounding him.
He was first scheduled to be executed in January 2002, but years of appeals delayed the process.
It was only in December 2020 that Moore ran out of appeals, meaning that he would now face the death penalty.
With the state of South Carolina lacking the drugs required for a lethal injection, they presented Moore with a choice - he could die by firing squad or go on the electric chair.
Moore refused both, leading to further delays to his execution.
With the drugs for lethal injection still not available to the state, firing squads were proposed as a solution to delayed executions.
A bill, which passed in the state senate by 66 to 43 votes, now gave inmates on death row the choice between the electric chair and firing squad.
On April 15 2022, Moore was once again given the choice to choose his execution. He opted to go before the guns of a firing squad.
With his execution scheduled for the 29th, Moore would have been the first person to be executed in South Carolina in over a decade, and the first to meet their end via firing squad.
However, on April 20th, the Supreme Court of South Carolina halted the execution, sparing Moore's life for the time being.
Moore's lawyers had been seeking intervention from the US Supreme Court to review whether Moore's sentence fit the crime for which he was being punished.
Moore's lawyer, Lindsey Vann had filed a motion claiming her client was facing a 'cruel and unusual punishment' - prohibited by the eighth amendment in the USA's Bill of Rights.
Vann said: "The electric chair and the firing squad are antiquated, barbaric methods of execution that virtually all American jurisdictions have left behind."
These sentiments were echoed by Kaye Hearn, an associate justice for the state's Supreme Court.
Hearn said: "The death penalty should be reserved for those who commit the most heinous crimes in our society, and I do not believe Moore’s crimes rise to that level."