COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Supreme Court has hit pause on the April 29 execution of Richard Moore, who was scheduled to die by firing squad.
Moore, 57, was scheduled to be the first person executed in South Carolina since 2011.
The court said in its temporary stay that it will release a more detailed order with new parameters at a later date.
Also on Wednesday, a second man on South Carolina’s death row found out the day he is scheduled die.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections said it received an execution date from the state Supreme Court for Brad Keith Sigmon, a 64-year-old Greenville County man who was sentenced to death for the 2001 killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents.
Sigmon’s execution date is set for May 13. By law, Sigmon will be asked to choose how he would prefer to die 14 days before his May 13 execution date, or April 29.
Without the option of lethal injection, Sigmon faces two choices: death by a 110-year-old electric chair or death by the state’s newly installed firing squad.
Sigmon is the latest state prisoner in South Carolina to be issued an execution date after a state law took effect last year that makes electrocution the default method of execution and also gives inmates the option to choose whether they would rather face three volunteers with rifles instead.
The General Assembly passed the law in 2021 after the S.C. Department of Corrections said it had been unable for years to procure the drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection.
Moore received his execution date earlier this month. In its order on Wednesday, the Supreme Court said that Moore’s execution was stayed “temporarily.”
It was not clear, should justices rule against him, whether the Supreme Court will have to set a new date for his execution or whether the April 29 execution date would remain in place.
Moore’s upcoming execution has attracted national publicity, in large part because executions by firing squads are rare in the United States. Only three other states – Utah, Oklahoma and Mississippi – offer inmates a choice.
At a press conference shortly after the stay was issued Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Henry McMaster indicated he would upheld Moore’s death sentence if the issue had come before him.
“I have no intention to commute a sentence,” McMaster said. “The jury made their decision in this particular case. I’ve seen the record, and there have been many hearings up and down, motions, and this penalty is a very strong response to criminal activity — but it is a necessary response.”
When an inmate who is condemned to die runs out of court appeals, a state’s governor is usually the last opportunity for a reprieve, usually changing a death sentence to life in prison.
McMaster, however, said the death penalty serves a worthwhile purpose for families of those killed.
“We have been unable to find anything that brings justice and an end to the families, outside of the death penalty,” McMaster said.
When Moore was sentenced to death in 2001, South Carolina had only two methods of execution, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Moore, Sigmon and another South Carolina death row inmate said.
The attorneys have also challenged the state’s contention that the option of lethal injection is “unavailable,” leaving inmates to choose between being shot or electrocuted.
Attorneys for S.C. Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling and McMaster, both named as defendants in the case, argued that inmates are not entitled to choose their preferred method of execution beyond what state law allows.
In an affidavit submitted as part of the case, Stirling refuted the allegations put forward by Moore’s attorneys, saying the Corrections Department has contacted manufacturers in attempts to purchase the drugs needed for lethal injection.
All the manufacturers contacted by the state agency, Stirling said, have “refused to sell the drugs to the Department.”
“The Department has also contacted various compounding pharmacists regarding compounding the drugs for the Department, but those efforts also have been unsuccessful,” Stirling said in his affidavit. “Additionally, the Department has attempted to purchase the bulk components for the drugs and have them compounded, and those efforts have likewise proven unsuccessful.”
Last week, a Richland County court judge agreed to a request by the Moore’s lawyers to closely examine those claims that the S.C. Department of Corrections cannot secure lethal injection drugs, leaving the electric chair and the firing squad as the only options for capital punishment.
The decision means attorneys for Moore and three other South Carolina death row inmates represented in the suit can move forward with a case that could get South Carolina’s new firing squad and century-old electric chair declared unconstitutional.
“This issue has never been decided by a South Carolina court before,” Judge Jocelyn Newman said in her decision. “To dismiss would be to tell Richard Moore, Freddie Owens, Brad Sigmon and Gary Terry that it’s not enough for a court to entertain before the court has to decide.”
Sigmon is facing the death penalty for a Greenville County murder committed in 2001. That year, Sigmon’s girlfriend, Rebecca Barbare, ended their three-year relationship.
The couple had been living together in a trailer in Greenville County that was also located right behind the home of Barbare’s parents, David and Gladys Larke.
According to court records, Sigmon became increasingly obsessed with Barbare after the breakup.
In the early morning hours of April 27, after Sigmon and an acquaintance spent the evening drinking alcohol and smoking crack cocaine, Sigmon said he planned to go to the Larkes’ home after Barbare took her children to school. His plan, he said, was to “tie her parents up,” and “get ahold of” her.
Sigmon took a baseball bat out from beneath his trailer, entered the home, and after Larke told his wife to get a gun, Sigmon beat both parents to death.
When Barbare returned, Sigmon forced her into a car and drove her away, with her father’s gun. But during the ride, Barbare jumped out of the car, and Sigmon stopped, got out, chased her and shot her.
She survived.
After a 10-day manhunt, Sigmon was captured in Tennessee after his mother helped authorities locate him.
He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002.
This is not the first time Sigmon has been issued an execution date.
Last year, it looked as if Sigmon was set to become the first person executed by the state of South Carolina in nearly a decade. He was set to die by electric chair on June 18 after his defense attorneys exhausted all appeals within the circuit court.
Sigmon reportedly told Alli Sullivan with Death Penalty Action in the days leading up to his scheduled execution that he “doesn’t know if [he] can get the horror out of [his] mind of being fried to death.” At that point, Sullivan wrote on her Instagram page, his voice began to crack. “You could tell he was crying,” she wrote.
But in June, the South Carolina Supreme Court delayed Sigmon’s execution, giving him a reprieve until the S.C. Department of Corrections could offer death by firing squad.
In March, the state’s corrections department notified the courts that the firing squad was ready for use should an inmate choose that method.
Executions will be carried out at the agency’s Broad River Correctional Institution outside of downtown Columbia.
The agency spent about $53,600 on supplies and materials to make the changes and comply with state law.
All firing squad members will be volunteers, but their decision to participate could still have lasting effects.
Last year, The State published a series of stories that revealed for the first time that the closer South Carolina execution workers were to the act of killing, the more mental and physical pain they experienced.
The series also reported an unprecedented level of secrecy around the current execution practices of the Department of Corrections.
Though execution teams in South Carolina have historically consisted of fewer than 10 people, last year, more than 100 were made to sign repressive confidentiality agreements that restricted their ability to talk about executions with people beyond that group.
South Carolina is one of eight states that still use the electric chair.
Currently, there are 35 people on South Carolina’s death row. All of them are men.
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(The State reporter John Monk contributed to this story with reporting from Columbia, South Carolina.)
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