South Carolina man on death row picks firing squad over electric chair

A South Carolina man scheduled to become the first prisoner to be executed in the state in more than a decade has opted to die by the firing squad instead of the electric chair, court documents filed on Friday revealed.

The prisoner, 57-year-old Richard Bernard Moore, made it clear that he supported neither the firing squad nor the electric chair, but opposed death by electrocution more, and hence took the decision to face three prison guards with rifles instead.

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“I believe this election is forcing me to choose between two unconstitutional methods of execution, and I do not intend to waive any challenges to electrocution or firing squad by making an election,” the prisoner said in a statement.

The 57-year-old has spent more than two decades in prison on death row after he was convicted for the 1999 killing of James Mahoney, a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg. During the trial in 2001, prosecutors said that Moore had entered the store looking for money for his cocaine habit, when he got into a tussle with Mahoney.

Mahoney then pulled a gun on Moore, who wrestled it away from him. The clerk then pulled a second gun, and after a tussle Moore shot Mahoney in the chest, while the clerk fired a shot that hit Moore’s arm.

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Moore’s execution is scheduled to take place later this month on April 29, and if all goes according to schedule, the 57-year-old will become the first person to be executed in South Carolina since 2011, and the fourth person in the entire US to die by firing squad in nearly half a century.

The last firing squad execution in the US took place in 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a five-man firing squad in Utah. Prior to that, only two other firing squad executions had been carried out in the US since 1976.