COLUMBIA --- Thirteen years ago, a South Carolina jury decided that Joseph Gardner should be executed for helping to rape, torture and kill a white woman in what prosecutors described as his revenge for centuries of oppression against blacks.

State officials said Monday that Mr. Gardner will be put to death Dec. 5 for his crimes. He can choose between lethal injection and electrocution.

Mr. Gardner was assigned to a Navy ship in Charleston in December 1992 when he and several friends began talking about the injustices done to blacks since they were brought to the country as slaves. The group decided to kill a white woman as retribution, said prosecutors, citing a letter found by investigators that contained passages aimed at justifying revenge against whites.

Several of the men saw 25-year-old Melissa "Missi" McLauchlin walking along a road and offered her drugs in exchange for sex. She agreed at first, going back to a home north of Charleston, but later changed her mind. Five men raped her at gunpoint that night, prosecutors said.

The men forced Ms. McLauchlin to bathe, then blindfolded and handcuffed her before putting her on the floorboard of an automobile. Mr. Gardner shot Ms. McLauchlin twice in the face after she got free from the handcuffs and tried to escape. He then shot her three more times on the side of a road near Summerville, authorities said.

The circumstances around Ms. McLauchlin's death stirred racial fears in Charleston just nine months after riots in Los Angeles that followed the acquittal of four white police officers in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King.

Mr. Gardner was the only person sentenced to death in the case.