South Carolina Supreme Court halts state’s plan for firing squad execution

COLUMBIA, S.C. —  South Carolina’s highest court on Wednesday issued a temporary stay blocking the state from carrying out what was set to be its first-ever firing squad execution.

The order by the state Supreme Court puts on hold at least temporarily the planned April 29 execution of Richard Bernard Moore, who drew the death sentence for the 1999 killing of convenience store clerk James Mahoney in Spartanburg.

The court said in issuing the temporary stay that it would release a more detailed order later.

Attorneys for the 57-year-old inmate had sought a stay, citing pending litigation in another court challenging the constitutionality of South Carolina’s execution methods, which also include the electric chair. Moore’s lawyers also wanted time to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether Moore’s sentence was proportionate to his crime.

It has been more than a decade since the last firing squad execution in the U.S. The state of Utah carried out all three such executions in the nation, starting in 1976, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. The most recent was in 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner faced a five-person firing squad.

The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday also set a May 13 execution date for Brad Sigmon, 64, who was convicted in 2002 of the double murder of his ex-girlfriend’s parents in Greenville County.

A state judge agreed last week to examine a legal challenge brought by Moore, Sigmon and two other death row inmates who have mostly exhausted their appeals. Their lawyers argue that both electrocution and the firing squad are “barbaric” methods of killing. The prisoners’ attorneys also want the judge to closely examine prisons officials’ claims that they‘re unable to obtain lethal injection drugs, citing executions by that method carried out by other states and the federal government in recent years.

South Carolina’s last execution was in 2011. State officials have attributed the decadelong hiatus to an inability to secure lethal injection drugs.

A 2021 law intended to solve that problem made the electric chair the new default execution method, and also codified the firing squad as an alternative option for condemned inmates.

Moore’s execution date was set after corrections officials disclosed last month that they had completed renovations on the state’s death chamber in Columbia to accommodate the firing squad and also developed new execution protocols.

Though Moore elected execution by firing squad earlier this month, he maintained in a written statement that he was forced to make a decision by a deadline set by state law and still found both options unconstitutional.

Moore is also separately asking a federal judge to consider whether the firing squad and the electric chair are cruel and unusual.

South Carolina is one of eight states that still use the electric chair and one of four — including Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah — to allow a firing squad, per the Death Penalty Information Center.