South Carolina schedules first execution after reinstating firing squads

South Carolina has scheduled its first execution since updating its death chamber for executions by firing squad, according to reports.

Richard Moore, 57, is scheduled to be executed on April 29 after more than two decades on death row and will have to choose within 14 days of the date whether he wants to be executed by firing squad or electric chair. He was previously convicted in 2001 of armed robbery and the murder of a store clerk in Spartanburg County in 1999.

The firing squad and electric chair were implemented last year to work around a decade-long pause in executions attributed to the corrections agency to procure lethal injection drugs.

The new law made the electric chair the state’s default means of execution, offering prisoners the option of death by firing squad or lethal injection, if those methods are available.

Corrections spent a reported $53,600 in renovations on the death chamber in Columbia to facilitate executions by firing squad, installing a metal chair with restraints that faces a wall with a rectangular opening 15 feet (4.6 meters) away where the shooters will stand.

According to the new protocols, three volunteers that are employees of Corrections will have rifles loaded with live ammunition and will aim at the inmate’s heart, who will have a hood placed over his head and given the opportunity to make a last statement.

Moore is one of 35 men on South Carolina’s death row. He was set to be killed in 2020 after exhausting all his federal appeals, but was delayed after prison officials could not obtain lethal injection drugs.

The State Supreme Court denied another appeal this week. Attorneys for Moore will ask the court to stay the execution.

South Carolina is one of eight states to still use the electric chair and now one of four to allow death by firing squad, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.