SC’s 2nd execution after a 13-year hiatus is scheduled

The above shows the space in the Department of Corrections' Columbia prisons complex for executions, as seen from the witness room. The firing squad chair (left) was added following a 2021 state law that made death by firing squad an option. The electric chair is under the cover. (Provided by the S.C. Department of Corrections)

COLUMBIA — The execution of death row inmate Richard Moore is set for Nov. 1, according to a notice Friday from the state Supreme Court.

The death warrant comes two weeks after the execution of Freddie Owens , the first in the state in 13 years.

Moore, who was convicted of shooting and killing a gas station clerk in 1999, is expected to be the second of at least six prisoners executed in succession over the coming months.

The state Supreme Court decided to space executions at least five weeks apart after inmates' attorneys argued that back-to-back executions could cause a host of issues for inmates, attorneys and executioners.

By state law, executions only occur on Fridays. The date is set as four Fridays after the court's clerk sends a death notice to the Department of Corrections.

Executions resumed this month after the high court ruled in July that both firing squad and electrocution, which legislators made the default in 2021, are allowable methods of execution.

Lethal injection is also an option again, after a secrecy law allowed officials to get a supply of pentobarbital , which is fatal in high doses.

In a Friday statement, Moore's attorneys asked the court to halt his execution because Moore, a Black man, was recommended a sentence of death by a jury that included no Black people. He also entered the convenience store unarmed, his attorneys wrote.

"Moore's execution would not be an act of justice; it would be an arbitrary act of vengeance," the statement reads.

The attorneys' arguments echo those then-Justice Kaye Hearn made in a partially dissenting opinion to one of his appeals.

​​"In my view, entering a convenience store unarmed falls well short of engaging in a cold, calculated, and premeditated murder," Hearn wrote at the time . "While tragic and heinous to the victim and his family, Moore's crime does not represent the 'worst of the worst' in terms of those murders reserved for the death penalty."

Moore must choose how he'll die by Oct. 18, two weeks before his execution date. If makes no choice, the default is by electric chair.

Owens died by lethal injection, which his attorney chose for him because of his own religious objection. He likened making the choice himself to suicide.

The order comes four years after the state Supreme Court halted Moore's first warrant in 2020 because the state did not have lethal injection drugs to carry it out. Legislators added firing squad as an option the next year, and in 2022, Moore became the first inmate to choose that as his method of execution.

Moore wrote at the time that he was choosing to die by firing squad only because he thought it was more humane that electric chair, which was his only other option at the time. However, he noted that he thought both were cruel and unusual. Justices halted that execution over a lawsuit asking that same question, which Moore filed alongside three other death row inmates.

Moore was next in line for execution after Owens because his crime, committed 25 years ago, is the oldest of the men who have exhausted their appeals, the state Supreme Court said when determining at what interval to set executions.

Four additional men have run out of appeals. Two other inmates are awaiting decisions on whether they are competent for execution, according to the state Attorney General's Office.

Richard Moore

Moore, 59, was convicted in 2001 of robbing and killing convenience store clerk James Mahoney in Spartanburg two years earlier.

Moore's conviction has been particularly contentious because he entered the store unarmed. Moore argued it was self-defense. He testified during his trial that he and Mahoney were arguing over Moore being short on change when Mahoney pulled out a gun.

The only witness, who had been playing video poker nearby, heard gunshots and found Moore dead from a gunshot to the chest.

Moore, bleeding from a gunshot wound to his left arm, drove to his dealer's house with $1,408 he had taken from the gas station's cash register. When his drug dealer said he wouldn't sell Moore drugs or take him to the emergency room, Moore left.

A passing police officer found Moore after he hit a telephone pole in his truck. As the officer approached, Moore laid on the ground, allegedly telling the officer, "I did it. I did it. I give up. I give up," according to court records.

The officer later testified that he found the stolen money, covered in blood, and an open pocket knife in the front of Moore's truck.

Hearn pointed in her partial dissent of Black people being disproportionately sentenced to death, something advocates repeated in calling for Gov. Henry McMaster to commute Owens' sentence.

Of the 31 men on South Carolina's death row, 17 inmates are white and 14 are Black.

"Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Moore's case highlights many of the pitfalls endemic to the death penalty, beginning with the role race plays," Hearn wrote at the time.