SC judge to hold hearing Thursday ahead of Richard Moore’s scheduled April 29 execution

Issues surrounding South Carolina death row inmate Richard Moore’s scheduled execution later this month will go before a state judge Thursday.

At a Monday morning virtual conference, Judge Jocelyn Newman told Moore’s attorneys and attorneys representing the state that the hearing will take place at 11 am. Thursday at the Richland County courthouse.

Moore, 57, has been on death row 21 years. His appeals are all but exhausted.

His execution has been scheduled for April 29, and the state only has two methods of execution available: the electric chair or the state’s newest option, the firing squad.

Moore’s case is unusual in that instead of being a calculated or unusually cruel killing, Moore entered a Spartanburg County convenience store in 1999 unarmed and intended to rob it. He got in a fight with the store clerk, who had a gun. In a scuffle, the clerk was fatally shot.

Last week, S.C. Supreme Court Associate Justice Kaye Hearn filed a lone dissent in his case, saying Moore was clearly not the “worst of the worst” for whom the death penalty is intended. Four other justices said Moore qualified for the death penalty since his killing was committed during what became an armed robbery.

Issues in the legal case before the judge Thursday include whether Moore can be forced to choose between the state’s electric chair and the firing squad. The General Assembly passed a law in 2021 implementing the firing squad because the S.C. Department of Corrections said it had been unable to procure for years the drugs necessary to carry out a lethal injection.

When Moore was sentenced to death in 2001, the state had only two methods of execution, his lawsuit argues.

Under state law at that time, Moore’s death sentence would have been carried out by lethal injection, unless he selected electrocution or the lethal injection method was held unconstitutional, the lawsuit said.

Moore is seeking an injunction that would halt his upcoming execution on one or more of several grounds, including that last year’s firing squad law cannot be applied retroactively to him and that both electrocution and the firing squad constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under the U.S. Constitution.

State Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said his agency, which is charged by law to carry out executions, has for years been unable to obtain chemicals used in lethal injections.

South Carolina is one of four states that have a firing squad as a method of execution. The other states are Mississippi, Utah and Oklahoma.

Moore’s lawsuit also raises questions about why South Carolina has not been able to obtain drugs for lethal injection when many other states have been able to.

Since 2013, when corrections began asserting that they could not obtain drugs to carry out lethal injection executions, 13 states and the federal government “have carried out 222 executions by lethal injection,” Moore’s lawsuit said.

“Additionally, since January 2020, six states and the federal government have carried out 27 executions by lethal injection. Most recently, Donald Anthony Grant was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on January 27, 2022. Matthew Reeves was executed by lethal injection in Alabama on the same day,” the lawsuit said. “Thirteen additional executions by lethal injection are currently scheduled in 2022 by various states.”

Defendants in Moore’s lawsuit, which was filed last week, are asking the court to dismiss the issues raised in the lawsuit.

Department of Corrections officials have said that companies selling the lethal drugs used in executions do not want to be identified. The agency has urged the General Assembly to pass a law that keeps the names of such companies confidential, but so far the Legislature has not.

States that have obtained lethal drugs have shield laws protecting the companies identified, corrections officials said.

This story was originally published April 11, 2022 at 12:23 PM with the headline "SC judge to hold hearing Thursday ahead of Richard Moore’s scheduled April 29 execution."