South Carolina inmate picks firing squad over electric chair as execution looms, calling both options "unconstitutional"

A South Carolina prisoner scheduled to be the first man executed in the state in more than a decade has decided to die by firing squad rather than in the electric chair later this month, according to court documents filed Friday.

Richard Moore, 57, is the also first state prisoner to face the choice of execution methods after a law went into effect last year making electrocution the default but giving inmates the option to face three prison workers with rifles instead.

Moore has spent more than two decades on death row after being convicted of the 1999 killing of convenience store clerk James Mahoney in Spartanburg. If executed as scheduled on April 29, he would be the first person put to death in the state since 2011.