COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — 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 since 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 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 can’t get hold of 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 after the state’s last batch expired in 2013. Efforts to contact manufacturers and compounding pharmacies have proved unfruitful, Corrections Department officials have repeatedly said.
A 2021 law intended to solve that problem made the electric chair the default execution method instead of lethal injection, 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.
Moore has spent more than two decades on death row after he was convicted in 2001 in the fatal shooting of convenience store clerk James Mahoney. Prosecutors said at his trial that he entered Nikki’s Speedy Mart in Spartanburg looking for money to support his cocaine habit. He then got into a dispute with Mahoney, who drew a pistol that Moore wrestled away from him. Mahoney pulled a second gun, and a gunfight ensued, with Mahoney shooting Moore in the arm and Moore shooting Mahoney in the chest.
Moore’s lawyers have said Moore couldn’t have intended to kill someone when he entered the store because he didn’t bring a gun with him.
Court halts South Carolina plan for firing squad execution & More Sweden Latest News Update
Court halts South Carolina plan for firing squad execution & More Sweden Live News
All this news that I have made and shared for you people, you will like it very much and in it we keep bringing topics for you people like every time so that you keep getting news information like trending topics and you It is our goal to be able to get
all kinds of news without going through us so that we can reach you the latest and best news for free so that you can move ahead further by getting the information of that news together with you. Later on, we will continue
to give information about more today world news update types of latest news through posts on our website so that you always keep moving forward in that news and whatever kind of information will be there, it will definitely be conveyed to you people.
Court halts South Carolina plan for firing squad execution & More Sweden Trending News Today
All this news that I have brought up to you or will be the most different and best news that you people are not going to get anywhere, along with the information breaking news today of this news, you can get other types of news along with your country and city. You will be able to get information related to, as well as you will be able to get information about what is going on around you through us for free
so that you can make yourself a knowledgeable by getting complete information about your country and state and information about news. Whatever is being given through us, I have tried to bring it to you through other websites, which you may like
very much and if you like all this news, then definitely around you. Along with the people of India, keep sharing such news necessary to your loved ones, let all the news influence them and they can move forward two steps further.
Credit Goes To News Website – This Original Content Owner News Website . This Is Not My Content So If You Want To Read Original Content You Can Follow Below Links