57yearold American Richard Bernard Moore, sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of a salesman, chose to be shot by firing squad: the only alternative to the electric chair given to him by South Carolina, where he is being held and where his Judgment is expected to be carried out on April 29. It’s a case that’s being talked about because Moore could become the first person in the state’s history to be killed by a firing squad — a very rare method considered by many to be inhumane — but also because it’s significant is for the problems that are. Many American states face the enforcement of death sentences.
Most of the death sentences carried out in the United States in recent decades have been carried out with injections of deadly substances, but they are harder to find because the main manufacturers have chosen not to sell them to those who wish to use them this purpose. South Carolina has long argued that it cannot buy the necessary substances for lethal injections and has therefore not carried out death sentences for 11 years. To resolve the situation, the state passed a new law last year that made the electric chair the established method of executing death sentences, but allowed the option of choosing the firing squad.
South Carolina has become one of four US states to allow train executions, which have been very rare in the country’s recent history. In the past fifty years, only three people have been killed by firing squads: the most recent was Ronnie Lee Gardner, who was killed in Utah in 2010 after being sentenced to death for murder, choosing a firing squad as a less painful lethal injection.
South Carolina law requires the convict to choose how they want to be killed 14 days before an execution, and a few days ago Moore chose the firing squad but said both executions by firing squad were more unconstitutional than those with electric chairman and appealed to block his sentence. His attorneys also argue that South Carolina made no real attempt to obtain the materials needed for the lethal injections.
Moore and two other South Carolina death row inmates were allowed to file their appeals in court last week. Moore’s attorneys also said they had asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to stay the execution of Moore’s death sentence so they could appeal to the US Supreme Court.
South Carolina recently passed guidelines for executions by firing squad. The hooded death row inmate is expected to be tied to a chair and three people shoot him in the heart from an opening in the wall opposite the inmate.