South Carolina Seeks to Execute Richard Moore December 4, But Won’t Say How

South Carolina has issued a death war­rant to exe­cute Richard Moore (pic­tured) on December 4, 2020, but, his lawyers say, the state has refused to tell him how it intends to car­ry it out. 

In a motion to stay Moore’s exe­cu­tion, filed in the South Carolina Supreme Court on November 16, Moore’s lawyers say that ​“the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) has pro­vid­ed no infor­ma­tion about how it intends to car­ry out the … exe­cu­tion,” pre­vent­ing Moore from mak­ing an intel­li­gent selec­tion between the state’s two autho­rized meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, lethal injec­tion or electrocution. 

Moore’s lawyers, Lindsey Vann and John Blume, said in a state­ment, ​“South Carolina is set to car­ry out its first exe­cu­tion in near­ly a decade under an unprece­dent­ed veil of secre­cy in the midst of a glob­al pan­dem­ic. The South Carolina Department of Corrections refus­es to release any infor­ma­tion about how it intends to car­ry out the exe­cu­tion — from the type and source of lethal injec­tion drugs to the sta­tus and test­ing of the elec­tric chair — cre­at­ing the risk of a tor­tur­ous exe­cu­tion with no oversight.”

“Never before has SCDC denied a con­demned inmate and his coun­sel access to the exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols in advance of an immi­nent exe­cu­tion,” Moore’s stay motion says. ​“Indeed, no oth­er state in the coun­try has exe­cut­ed some­one under such an extreme veil of secrecy.”

South Carolina law grants con­demned pris­on­ers the right to des­ig­nate whether to be exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion or by elec­tro­cu­tion. If the pris­on­er makes no des­ig­na­tion, the law man­dates that the exe­cu­tion take place by lethal injec­tion. On November 18, a Department of Corrections spokesper­son told Columbia’s news­pa­per, The State, that it did not cur­rent­ly have the drugs to car­ry out a lethal injec­tion, but was still attempt­ing to obtain them. Moore declined to make a des­ig­na­tion by the November 20 dead­line, requir­ing the state to use lethal drugs. 

The cor­rec­tions spokesman said that South Carolina has been unable to obtain exe­cu­tion drugs from phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, assert­ing with­out evi­dence that unnamed ​“anti-death penal­ty activists” were respon­si­ble for ​“chill­ing the sale of drugs to depart­ments of cor­rec­tions across the coun­try.” Pharmaceutical com­pa­nies have refused to sell their drugs to states for use in exe­cu­tions, repeat­ed­ly stat­ing that their cor­po­rate mis­sion is to save lives and pro­mote health, and that their med­i­cines are meant sole­ly for therapeutic purposes.

Citing pub­lic health issues, Moore also has sought to post­pone his exe­cu­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. No state has car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since July 8, and the only two states that have car­ried out exe­cu­tions in the pan­dem­ic — Missouri and Texas — have had COVID out­breaks in those facil­i­ties in the suc­ceed­ing weeks. Texas has halt­ed eight exe­cu­tions this year and Tennessee has delayed four oth­ers as a result of the coro­n­avirus. Most recent­ly, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on November 6 grant­ed a reprieve to Pervis Payne ​“due to the chal­lenges and dis­rup­tions caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.” Payne had been sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed December 3, one day before Moore’s pend­ing execution date.

Vann and Blume said South Carolina should push back Moore’s exe­cu­tion until the pan­dem­ic is under con­trol ​“to avoid the unnec­es­sary risk of spread­ing the dead­ly dis­ease through the many peo­ple required to be involved in and wit­ness to an execution.”

South Carolina has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since May 2011.