The state is seeking to restart executions after delays for a decade due to legal problems with lethal injection.
A South Carolina death row prisoner chose Friday to die by firing squad instead of an electric chair, after he was required by a new law to pick or the state would choose for him—but he questioned the constitutionality of either punishment. Moore’s attorneys have argued he should not have been charged with a death-penalty offense in the first place, as the crime could not have been premeditated because he did not bring a gun into the store, claiming he couldn’t have planned to kill anyone during the robbery. Kaye Hearn, an associate justice on South Carolina’s Supreme Court, issued a dissent in Moore’s case.
