Richard Moore: South Carolina inmate execution will be first via FIRING SQUAD in 12 years
In 1999, Richard Bernard Moore fatally shot a convenience store clerk during a botched robbery. Over two decades later, he will finally be executed, after South Carolina confirmed it has made all the preparations necessary to execute him via firing squad. The rare method is only offered in three other states but was reintroduced in South Carolina amidst the challenges of lethal injections.
While executions are at historic lows all over the US, there are still plenty of inmates on death row, with states struggling to execute them. A large cause for that is the lack of availability of lethal injections, with companies that make them refusing to sell the chemicals to states. As a result, states have had to pivot to other methods like the electric chair. In South Carolina though, the firing squad has clearly become the preferred method.
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In 2021, two other inmates on death row requested to be executed by firing squads, leading to their execution being delayed. South Carolina has not executed an inmate since 2011, but Moore will change that when he faces the firing squad on April 29, 2022.
America's executions via firing squad
At the moment, eight states including South Carolina offer death by electric chair, and four offer firing squads. Other options like hanging and lethal gas also exist, but they aren't the primary method used. Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah are the other states to offer the firing squad option to inmates, but even then it has very rarely been used. Since 1960, only four executions have been carried out by firing squads, all in Utah. The last inmate to be executed this way was Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.
On June 18, 2010, Gardner was executed by a firing squad at a Utah state prison in Draper. Gardner spent close to a quarter of a century on death row for the killing of attorney Michael Burdell in 1985, while attempting to escape from a Salt Lake City courthouse. Before him, John Albert Taylor was executed by firing squad in 1996 also in Draper. The method has largely been phased out in the US but was brought back in South Carolina because the state was running out of options.
In March, the state corrections agency confirmed it had made all the necessary arrangements to offer firing squads as a method, including a $53,600 renovation of the death chamber in Columbia. It has also confirmed the protocols that will be used, a year after the law offering firing squads was passed.
With that, Moore will become the first inmate to be executed by firing squad in South Carolina and the first in over a decade in the USA. He was originally meant to be executed in 2020 by lethal injection, but the unavailability of the drugs meant he had to choose another option. He is one of the 35 men on death row in the state, indicating that the firing squad option is likely to be heavily used this year.
Meanwhile, there is a broader debate on the need for capital punishment, with the US joining Japan as the only G7 member to even have the option. 27 states in the US still legalize capital punishment, while Pennsylvania, California, and Oregon have a Governor-imposed moratorium.