COLOMBIA, SC – South Carolina prison officials say they need to postpone an execution scheduled for Friday because they will not be able to obtain the necessary lethal injectable drugs.
A lawyer for the state Department of Corrections wrote in a letter to the South Carolina Supreme Court last week that the agency cannot carry out the execution of Richard Bernard Moore due to a shortage of drugs, which he has not had in stock since 2013. The Associated A The press obtained a copy of the letter.
The court marked Moore’s execution after he exhausted his federal remedies this month. Moore, 55, spent nearly two decades on death row after his conviction for the 1999 murder of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg County. He would be the first person executed in South Carolina in almost a decade.
The state’s usual injection protocol requires three drugs: pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. But the corrective agency said it hasn’t had the drugs in stock since 2013, when its last supply expired. The agency said earlier that it reserves the right to execute Moore on a single lethal dose of the pentobarbital sedative.
Lindsey Vann, one of Moore’s lawyers, called the delay “unprecedented” on Monday, adding that she was unaware of any other execution in South Carolina history requiring such a delay due to a lack of drugs.
In 2017, prison officials said they could not comply with Bobby Wayne Stone’s execution order without the appropriate drugs. At the time, however, Stone had not yet exhausted his resources in court.
Prison officials say that according to state law, Moore should be executed by lethal injection by default, because he did not choose between lethal injection and electrocution within the deadline earlier this month. Moore’s lawyers say he did not make a decision because the agency is not being transparent with its enforcement protocols.
Moore’s legal team is also trying to block execution in federal court.
Ensuring lethal injectable drugs has become an increasingly difficult task in the United States, as drug makers have avoided selling to states under pressure from death penalty activists. Prison chief Bryan Stirling, along with the governor and attorney general, defended a bill to protect the identities of the manufacturers who supply these drugs.
State lawmakers have also considered a bill in recent years that requires prisoners on death row to die in electric chairs if the lethal injection is not available.
Moore is one of 37 people, all men, currently on death row in South Carolina. Some prosecutors have sought the death penalty less frequently in recent years, citing the state’s inability to carry out executions.
South Carolina’s last execution was in 2011.