COLUMBIA (South Carolina, US), April 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The South Carolina Supreme Court halted the southern US state’s first-ever firing squad execution, which was slated to be carried out next week.
Richard Moore, a 57-year-old African American man, was to be put to death on April 29 for the 1999 murder of a convenience store clerk during a robbery.
With drug manufacturers refusing to supply the necessary ingredients for a lethal injection, however, Moore was given the choice between death by electric chair or firing squad, both of which his lawyers argued violated a constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
“We grant the motion and temporarily stay Appellant’s execution,” the state Supreme Court said, promising a forthcoming “more detailed order setting forth the parameters of the stay.”
Moore’s death would have marked the first execution in the southern state in over a decade.
Recent US executions have been carried out by lethal injection, but South Carolina has been forced to abandon that method due to lack of components for the drug mixture.
Faced with his two alternate options, Moore last Friday chose the firing squad, which was to be made up of three rifle-toting volunteers from the state’s Corrections Department.
A judge agreed on Thursday to hear Moore’s challenge.
“The electric chair and the firing squad are antiquated, barbaric methods of execution that virtually all American jurisdictions have left behind,” said Lindsey Vann, a lawyer for Moore.
Electrocution has been used for seven of the 43 executions carried out in South Carolina since 1985. The last time was in 2008.
A firing squad has been used only three times in the United States — all in the western state of Utah — since 1976, when the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment. — NNN-AGENCIES
