South Carolina death row inmate Richard Moore has selected lethal injection as his method of execution.
Moore made the choice in an affidavit signed Friday and submitted to the South Carolina Supreme Court. South Carolina’s execution protocol states that Moore will be killed by a single, fatal dose of pentobarbital, a powerful sedative that can cause death by suffocation.
Moore was sentenced to death for shooting and killing James Mahoney, a store clerk, in Spartanburg County in 1999.
South Carolina law requires condemned inmates to select between death by lethal injection, firing squad or the electric chair.
If his sentence is carried out, he will be the second person in the state executed since 2011, when executions were halted after the state ran out of the drugs necessary to perform lethal injections.
In 2022, Moore opted for the firing squad over electrocution , kicking off a series of legal challenges and changes to state law that ultimately saw the reintroduction of the lethal injection as an option for executions.
Freddie Owens, the first man to be executed in South Carolina in 13 years , opted for lethal injection. He was executed last month.
Prosecutors say that the night of Sept. 16, 1999, Moore shot and killed Mahoney while trying to rob Nikki’s Speedy Mart for money to buy crack. During the robbery, Mahoney drew a gun on Moore, who then disarmed him. A witness, seated at a video poker machine in the back of the store, said that Moore turned and shot at him before Mahoney drew a second gun and he and Moore opened fired at each other.
Moore was struck in the arm while Mahoney was fatally shot in the chest. In court filings, Moore said that an altercation over change led to Mahoney pulling a gun on him.
When South Carolina ran out of the drugs needed for lethal injection in 2011, executions were put on hold because no company was willing to publicly sell the drugs. But by 2022, the state appeared set to resume executions after laws were passed to allow for the choice of either death by the newly-created firing squad or electrocution on the state Department of Corrections’ 110-year-old electric chair.
But Moore’s choice of the firing squad in April that year led to the state Supreme Court putting a stay on his execution. The death penalty resumed this year after the state was able to secure drugs for lethal injections following the passage of a “shield law,” which prevents the release of most information about the drug, including its manufacturer.
Last week, state Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling provided the state Supreme Court with an affidavit stating that the department was in possession of a dose of pentobarbital tested by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and of sufficient strength and purity to perform the execution.
Despite opposition from death penalty attorneys, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in the lead up to Owens’ execution that Stirling’s affidavit provided sufficient information for the inmate to choose the method of execution.
This is a breaking news story. Check back here for more updates.
Local News
