Prison officials have told a death row inmate he can choose how he dies.
Richard Moore was told on Tuesday that he can choose 3 a firing squad, the electric chair and lethal injection for his South Carolina November 1 execution .
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.
State law gives Moore until October 18 to decide or by default he will be electrocuted.
His execution would mark the second in South Carolina after a 13-year pause due to the state not being able to obtain a drug needed for lethal injection.
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.