In the early evening of November 1, Richard B. Moore was executed by the state of South Carolina for the 1999 murder of James Mahoney in Spartanburg County.
I was one of the witnesses to the execution.
Much of the way South Carolina administers the death penalty is hidden from the public by law. We do not know who works on the execution team or where the state obtained the pentobarbital to administer to the condemned prisoner via lethal injection.
In South Carolina, up to ten witnesses can sit in a room adjacent to the death chamber to observe the execution at the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ Broad River Road complex.
During Friday’s execution, two of Mahoney’s family members, Spartanburg County Attorney Barry Barnette, Moore’s spiritual adviser, and Moore’s attorney Lindsey Vann, sat before three media witnesses.
Behind us sat a corrections officer and an agent from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
Traveling to the death penalty facility
Before going to the death penalty facility, myself and the two other media witnesses, Jeffrey Collins of the Associated Press and Brookley Cromer of Fox Carolinas, left the media staging area and were driven in a minivan into a caravan of several other vehicles containing witnesses. a training facility. We waited there for about an hour.
The witnesses were kept in separate rooms, preventing interaction. Collins, Cromer and I sat in a room together as we waited to go to the death penalty facility. When we went to the bathroom, we had to be accompanied by a corrections officer.
When we entered the death penalty facility, we signed a logbook. The witnesses were not all together until we were in the witness room for the execution.
When media witnesses entered, the execution chamber curtain was already open. Moore lay on the bed in a green jumpsuit. He was tied with straps around his shoulders. A blanket came up to Moore’s chest.
Through bulletproof glass with bars, we saw that Moore was wearing glasses and had a closely cropped gray beard, looking much older than the photos that had previously circulated.
The news media witnesses had to be in the room before the curtain opened and hear Moore’s closing statement read by Vann. But there was a miscommunication within the implementation team and those actions took place before we arrived on site.
The execution chamber is small. The firing squad chair and the electric chair, permanent features of the room, were not visible because they were separated by another curtain.
We saw three lines coming out of holes in the brick wall behind Moore’s head. One was an IV line that went into Moore’s outstretched left arm. Another appeared to be a second transparent tube going to his right side. A third line looked like an electrical cord, similar to what you find in hospital rooms.
Based on a digital clock to our right in the witness room, a prison official wearing headphones asked for permission to begin the execution two minutes after the media witnesses entered the room.
Shortly afterwards, as the pentobarbital flowed, we heard what sounded like short snoring, similar to someone with sleep apnea. It was several deep breaths. Then his breathing became shallow. At 6:04 p.m., Moore’s chest appeared to stop moving.
Then we waited and observed in silence.
Mahoney’s relatives, a husband and wife, and Barnette, looked ahead the entire time with stoic expressions on their faces.
Vann held a silver cross and a folded sheet of paper, presumably containing Moore’s closing statement. She fought back tears during the execution, but in the end it didn’t work. At 6:07 p.m., Moore’s spiritual advisor reached out to Vann, and they held hands for the duration of the execution.
Three prison officials stood in the execution chamber with Moore. Sometimes they closed their eyes and bowed their heads.
At 6:22 p.m., a medical professional entered the room with a stethoscope, checking for vital signs. Two minutes later, one of the prison officials in the room announced, “The State of South Carolina’s case against Inmate Moore concluded at 6:24 p.m. Please leave the witness room.”
When we left the witness room, we signed the witness statement and then went back to the vehicles. Collins, Cromer, and I confirmed with each other the timing of the start of the execution, the moment the gasp was heard, the moment breathing seemed to stop, the time of death, and other details from the room we saw.
It was this information from the quiet, somber room that we shared with other news media waiting outside the Broad River Road complex after the execution.
