Michelle Liu/Associated Press/Report for America

The state of South Carolina has scheduled its first execution after prison officials indicated they are ready to conduct executions by firing squad. Richard Bernard Moore is scheduled to die April 29 after the state Supreme Court issued an execution order Thursday. The 57-year-old Moore has spent more than two decades on death row after he was convicted of killing convenience store clerk James Mahoney in Spartanburg. Moore could face a choice between the electric chair and the firing squad. Lawmakers added the firing squad option to the state's capital punishment law last year to work around a decade-long pause in executions attributed to a lack of lethal injection drugs.

Lawyers for two men on South Carolina's death row have asked the state's Supreme Court to hold off on setting execution dates while they challenge a new law allowing executions by firing squad. The Monday request by attorneys for Brad Keith Sigmon and Freddie Eugene Owens comes after the state Corrections Department said last week that the agency is now prepared to carry out firing-squad executions. Lawmakers added the firing squad as an option last year in an effort to get around a decade-long pause in executions. The high court set execution dates for both inmates last year but delayed their deaths to give the corrections department time to set up the firing squad.

A longtime friend of once-prominent South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh now faces 18 charges in an alleged scheme to help Murdaugh steal more than $3 million from the family of Murdaugh's dead housekeeper. An indictment unsealed Wednesday accuses Cory Fleming of defrauding the sons of Gloria Satterfield, who died following a fall at the Murdaugh home in 2018.

Prosecutors say a white South Carolina trooper won't face criminal charges for fatally shooting a Black man who ran away from an attempted traffic stop last year. 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson said Monday that Master Trooper Whittney Blake Benton acted in self-defense when he killed Tristan Vereen last September. Investigators say Benton tried to pull Vereen over for a cracked windshield, prompting a chase by car and foot. Benton told investigators he shot Vereen in the chest because he feared for his life after Vereen bit, kicked and used Benton's stun gun on the trooper during a brief fight. A lawyer for Vereen's family says they want the Department of Justice to review the facts.

A shuttered bowling alley at the center of a 1968 integration protest where state police killed three Black students is being remade into a civil rights center. State troopers shot into a crowd of students on the historically Black campus of South Carolina State University almost 54 years ago. Protesters were trying to pressure the white owner of the All-Star Bowling Lanes into letting Black patrons use the lanes. The National Park Service is helping a non-profit group renovate the All-Star Bowling Lanes, remaking it into a fully-functional bowling alley with a civil rights theme. Tuesday marks the official anniversary of the shootings.

A jury has acquitted a fired South Carolina police officer of assaulting a Black man during a traffic stop last year. The jurors on Wednesday found former Rock Hill police investigator Jonathan Moreno not guilty of the misdemeanor assault charge. Moreno and his attorneys argued he was scapegoated by police and prosecutors over the June 2021 incident that Moreno publicly apologized for last year. Bystander video on Facebook shows officers wrestling with Travis Price and his brother and forcing them to the ground. The incident prompted several days of protests last summer.

A group of South Carolina lawmakers have advanced a proposal to ban all abortions in the state should the U.S. Supreme Court allow it. The full Medical Affairs committee is now poised to consider that measure after a subcommittee voted on it Wednesday. Senators also advanced a bill requiring doctors to tell women receiving drug-induced abortions about a controversial method to possibly halt the abortion process. The full abortion ban currently includes no exceptions for rape or incest.

A former South Carolina police officer who apologized after attacking a Black man without provocation at a traffic stop last year is seeking for a jury to acquit him of a misdemeanor charge stemming from the incident. A jury heard opening statements Monday on whether former Rock Hill police investigator Jonathan Moreno committed assault and battery against Travis Price at a June 2021 traffic stop. Bystander video on Facebook showing officers wrestling with Price and his brother and forcing them to the ground. The incident prompted several days of protests last summer.

The family of a mentally ill Black man who died after South Carolina jail employees repeatedly stunned him and then kneeled on his back until he stopped breathing is still seeking criminal charges one year later. Relatives for Jamal Sutherland want South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson to prosecute the Charleston County guards who restrained the 31-year-old shortly before his death. Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson had said last year that she couldn't prove the guards intended to kill Sutherland.

Prominent South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh is scheduled for a virtual hearing Monday as a judge could consider lowering the $7 million bond she set last month. Prosecutors have accused Murdaugh of stealing more than $6.2 million from clients by funneling the cash through a fraudulent bank account. His lawyers say Murdaugh has no money anymore and can't afford the $7 million bond. He's been jailed since his arrest in October, and a different judge in a civil suit froze his assets in November. Murdaugh's legal troubles began after his wife and son were found shot dead outside a family home last summer. Their killings are still unsolved.