S. Carolina Prisoner Chooses Firing Squad Over Electric Chair As He Challenges Law That Forces Death Row Inmates To Pick

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.

Richard Moore, 57, wrote in a court filing he more strongly opposes electrocution, but stressed he believes he was forced “to choose between two unconstitutional methods of execution.”

After a decade-long pause in executions in South Carolina due to legal problems with lethal injections, a law that went into effect last year...