Facing Execution, Richard Moore Told To Choose How South Carolina Will Kill Him

Lethal injection Death Chamber at a Texas prison on November 14, 1991, at Huntsville, The Ellis Unit, Texas. | Source: Paul Harris / Getty

A death row inmate in South Carolina convicted under questionable circumstances has been tasked by the state with choosing the method in which his execution will be carried out.

Richard Moore, a Black man, is the only death row inmate in South Carolina who was found guilty at trial by a jury that didn’t have a single Back person serving. Now, with his pending execution on Nov. 1, South Carolina is allowing him to decide how he will die: by the electric chair, lethal injection or via firing squad, the Associated Press reported.

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More from the Associated Press:

Moore, 59, is facing the death penalty for the September 1999 shooting of store clerk James Mahoney. Moore went into the Spartanburg County store unarmed to rob it and the two ended up in a shootout after Moore was able to take one of Mahoney’s guns. Moore was wounded, while Mahoney died from a bullet to the chest.

He is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution. Moore, who is Black, is the only man on South Carolina’s death row to have been convicted by a jury that did not have any African Americans, his lawyers said. If he is executed, he would also be the first person put to death in the state in modern times who was unarmed initially and then defended themselves when threatened with a weapon, they said.

Moore has until Oct. 18 to make his decision. If he fails to choose, South Carolina’s default method of execution is the electric chair.

If Moore’s state-sanctioned killing goes according to schedule, he will be executed a little more than a month after Missouri carried out the death penalty against a Black man who was serving a prison sentence for a murder in which the DNA evidence raised questions about his innocence.

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Khaliifah ibn Rayford Daniels ‘Abdul-Qudduus, also known as Marcellus Williams, was executed on Sept. 24 via lethal injection. He was the 100th person killed by an American state or the federal government since 1989–the year some mark as the beginning of the modern age.

The persistent racism of America’s death penalty

The death penalty has a long, troubling history intertwined with systemic racism in the U.S. justice system. Black lives have been sacrificed for decades, dating back to the era of slavery, when lynching served as a brutal means of social control against enslaved individuals. The extrajudicial violence was often justified by those committing it as a necessary form of “justice” against Black men, women and children, who had been accused with typically little more than a white person’s accusation.

Black people face the death penalty at a higher rate.

Since 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave states the freedom to revise their death penalty laws, 40% of those executed have been Black, more than three times their presentation in society.

Additionally, just over 1% (1.33) of white defendants who were convicted of killing a Black person, received a death sentence. In cases where the defendant was Black and the victim, white, nearly 20% (19.22) are sentenced to death. And when error is accepted by the Courts in death penalty cases, more than 50% of exonerated death row inmates—100 out of 189—are Black  (as of Jan. 1, 2024). That alone should make each case the subject of particular scrutiny.

This is America.

SEE ALSO:

The Execution Of Marcellus Williams Should Call Us All To Demand The Death Penalty’s Abolishment

Days Before Marcellus ‘Khaliifah’ Williams Was Executed, Another Likely Innocent Black Man Was Too

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