SC officials say they can't obtain drugs by Friday execution
Source: AP
By MICHELLE LIU
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina prison officials say they have to delay an execution scheduled for Friday because they won’t be able to obtain the necessary lethal injection drugs.
An attorney 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 the lack of drugs, which it has not had stocked since 2013. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter.
The court scheduled Moore’s execution after he exhausted his federal appeals this month. Moore, 55, has spent nearly two decades on death row following his conviction for the 1999 killing of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg County. He would be the first person executed in South Carolina in nearly a decade.
The state’s usual injection protocol calls for three drugs: pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. But the corrections agency has said it has not had the drugs in stock since 2013, when its last supplies expired. The agency has previously said it reserves the right to execute Moore with a single lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital.
FILE - This undated file photo provided on July 11, 2019, by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the new death row at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, S.C. South Carolina prison officials say they have to delay the execution Richard Bernard Moore, scheduled for Friday, Dec. 4, 2020, because they won't be able to obtain the lethal injection drugs needed. Moore has spent nearly two decades on death row for his conviction in the 1999 fatal shooting of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg County. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File)
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/south-carolina-courts-executions-931bae9dd612fe341f3c09b0bcd8ff91
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