South Carolina resumes executions, may debut firing squad

South Carolina will resume executing death-row inmates after preparing facilities to accommodate the recently instituted option of death by firing squad.

Richard Bernard Moore, 57, will face execution April 29 for the murder of convenience store clerk James Mahoney, the Associated Press reports.

Moore has been on death row for nearly two decades. He will be first prisoner executed since 2011 and will now be able to choose either death by electric chair or firing squad, becoming the first prisoner to have two such choices since the state updated its execution methods last year, the news outlet also reports. 

Under the firing squad option, three volunteer corrections department employees reportedly will have loaded rifles and fire at the prisoner's heart. The prisoner will wear a hood and first be allowed to give a final statement.

The state government adopted the execution method as a means of bypassing the shortage of lethal injection chemicals, which had stonewalled executions in South Carolina for over a decade.

Moore was arrested in 2001 after attempting to rob a Spartanburg convenience store to support his cocaine addiction, according to the AP. During the altercation, store clerk James Mahoney pulled a gun that Moore wrested from him, after which Mahoney pulled a second gun, resulting in a shootout that left Mahoney dead and Moore injured.

Moore attorney Lindsey Vann announced Thursday she would seek a stay of execution.