COLOMBIA, SC (AP) – The state of South Carolina says that a prisoner scheduled to be executed next week could be sentenced to death with a lethal dose of just one drug if officials fail to obtain the three drugs required by the procedure .
The South Carolina Supreme Court set the date of execution for December 4 for Richard Bernard Moore, 55, who spent nearly two decades on death row after his conviction for the 1999 murder of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg.
In a letter to Moore’s lawyers, the South Carolina Department of Corrections said it reserves the right to execute Moore on a single lethal dose of the pentobarbital sedative, the Herald-Journal first reported on Friday.
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.
Execution plans may be delayed if the agency is unable to obtain pentobarbital. 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.
A handful of states, including Texas and Georgia, along with the federal system, most recently used sodium pentobarbital alone in their enforcement protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Moore’s team will continue to present legal challenges in federal court after the South Carolina Supreme Court denied a recent motion to suspend execution, attorney Lindsey Vann told the Associated Press on Monday.
Moore’s lawyers argued that the court should delay the date due to the dangers that the coronavirus pandemic poses to those involved in the execution and to those who would witness it.
The lawyers also said the corrections department was withholding information about its methods of execution, preventing Moore from making an informed decision between the two methods of death penalty provided for in state law: lethal injection or electrocution.
By law, Moore had until November 20 to choose between the two methods. But Moore made no decision until Friday, Vann confirmed. Without this choice, the method standardizes for lethal injection.
Moore’s team objected to reviewing the information provided by the prison department last week because it required them to sign a confidentiality agreement that would not have allowed them to consult medical experts, Vann said.
In court cases, lawyers at the prison agency and the attorney general’s office characterized the recent dispute as “a last-minute attempt to postpone a constitutionally approved punishment”. Vann said Moore asked for information on methods of execution for months.
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.
Prosecutors said Moore tried to rob a convenience store in 1999 and got into a shootout with clerk James Mahoney, who shot Moore in the left arm. Moore shot Mahoney and a client, killing Mahoney, they said.