COLUMBIA, S.C. – If Richard Moore is executed, he will have some say in how he goes — the electric chair or the firing squad.
Moore is one of three prisoners on South Carolina's death row who have run out of appeals in the past six months and could be among the first to face the grim choice under a new state law.
But his supporters — including the state's former prisons chief — say he deserves better. The state Supreme Court set and then stayed the prisoners' executions after the Corrections Department said it didn’t have the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections.
Now, Gov. Henry McMaster has signed a law requiring the condemned to choose to die by gunshot or electrocution if lethal injection drugs aren’t available.