by South Carolina has executed a man, despite widespread calls to spare his life, including from the judge who originally sentenced him to death.
Richard Moore, 59, was killed by lethal injection on Friday afternoon, minutes after the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, announced he would not grant him clemency.
Moore was executed after an extraordinary push to save his life, including letters of advocacy from the former director of the state department of corrections, three trial jurors, the judge presiding over the case and a former state supreme court justice. Supporters argued that he was a role model behind bars. His two children, who remained close to him during his imprisonment, also pleaded for mercy.
The execution began at 6.01pm, the Associated Press reported. Moore’s breathing became shallow and stopped at around 6.04pm, and he was pronounced dead at 6.24pm. Moore’s longtime attorney, who was in the room, could not fight back tears.
A prison spokesman shared Moore’s final words, which included a message to the relatives of the man he killed: “To the family of Mr. James Mahoney, I am very sorry for the pain and sorrow I have caused you all . My children and grandchildren, I love you and I am very proud of you. Thank you for the joy you brought into my life. To all my family and friends, old and new, thank you for your love and support.”
Judge 360, the nonprofit that represented Moore, criticized the execution in a statement, saying it “highlights the flaws in South Carolina’s death penalty system”: “It seems that whoever is executed against who are allowed their lives in prison. based on more than chance, race, or status. It is unacceptable that our State achieves the final punishment in such a trivial way… By killing Richard, the State also created more victims. Richard’s children are now fatherless, and his grandchildren will have to grow up without their ‘Pa Pa’.”
Moore was the second person executed this year in South Carolina, which has recently seen a resurgence in the pursuit of a rapid killing spree.
The case drew widespread scrutiny for racial bias and doubts about the validity of Moore’s sentence.
Moore, Black, was convicted by an all-white jury of the armed robbery and murder of Mahoney, a white convenience store clerk, 25 years ago. Moore has said the killing was in self-defense.
On 16 September 1999, Moore was unarmed when he entered the store where Mahoney was working the counter. There was no footage, so the exact circumstances of the incident are unclear. Moore has said they got into an argument because he was short on change, prompting Mahoney to pull a gun on him.
In the scuffle, both men were shot – Moore in the arm and Mahoney fatally in the chest. Moore took money from the store.
There is no dispute that Moore was unarmed when he arrived. Mahoney carried a gun, and there were two weapons behind the counter. A store witness said he heard an argument, and then saw Moore with his hands on the clerk’s hands and that Moore shot in his direction. The witness was not hit and said he played dead and did not see the rest of the encounter.
A forensic investigator hired by Moore’s lawyers reviewed crime scene evidence in 2017 and concluded that the first shot was fired while the two men were fighting over the gun.
Moore’s lawyers argued that regardless of the details of the shooting, he should not be eligible for the death penalty, reserved for the “worst” murders, since he went in unarmed and had no premeditated plans to rob. armed or homicide. In 2022, Kaye Hearn, a state supreme court judge, agreed, writing in a dissenting opinion that the death sentence was “invalid”, “disproportionate” and a “relic of the past”.
Hearn said it was “disturbing” that prosecutors were unable to identify a comparable death penalty case involving an unarmed robbery and noted that Spartanburg County had a history of “alarming” racial disparities in the death penalty. where Moore was prosecuted; all but one of 21 cases from 1985 to 2001 involved white victims.
Moore’s team also made a final appeal to the US supreme court, arguing that prosecutors had illegally removed two qualified Black jurors, but the court refused to stay the execution on Thursday.
In a clemency video submitted with Moore’s request this week, Jon Ozmint, the former head of South Carolina’s department of corrections, said he hoped the governor would “give Richard the rest of his life to continue pouring into life other people”. In an earlier letter, Ozmint said he advocated the death penalty and had never advocated overturning a death sentence, but the team said the team had “confidence” in Moore as a “trustworthy and respected” man who spouse of death.
“Commuting would have a positive impact on hundreds of offenders who would be influenced by Richard’s story of redemption and his positive example,” Ozmint wrote.
Gary Clary, the former circuit judge who handed down Moore’s death sentence, wrote to McMaster on Wednesday, saying he had “studied the case of every person on death row in South Carolina” and that Moore’s case was “unique”: “After. years of thought and consideration, I humbly ask you to grant Mr. Moore executive clemency as an act of grace and mercy.”
Three jurors wrote that they supported commutation based on Moore’s rehabilitation. Thousands signed petitions to stop the execution.
Lindsey Vann, Moore’s attorney for a decade, said she was not aware of any other case in South Carolina about the modern death penalty in which a sentencing judge supported leniency. She said on Thursday that Moore tried to be optimistic: “He’s grateful for all the support, which gives him hope …
Moore remained close to his two children, who had been visiting behind glass since they were young. His daughter, Alexandria Moore, 31, remembered him teaching Spanish and creating puzzles through letters when she was a child and said he would be a beloved grandfather to her two daughters, telling the Guardian last week: “I will my girl always my dad. … Even with the physical distance, he’s very much here and a part of my girls’ lives and my life.”
During his imprisonment, Moore leaned into religion, focused on painting and was friends with a pen pal, his lawyers said. His mercy video included a clip of an earlier interview, in which Moore expressed regret: “This is definitely a part of my life that I wish I could change, because I took a life … I broke the family of the deceased . I beg the forgiveness of that particular family.”
Protesters gathered outside the Broad River prison in Columbia, leading prayers and holding “Save Richard Moore” and “Do justice not people” signs.
“South Carolina’s elected officials don’t care about racism in the death penalty. They’re more interested in using the system to win elections,” Rev. Hillary Taylor, director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told the crowd after his execution.
South Carolina recently resumed executions after a 13-year hiatus due to a lack of lethal injection supplies and challenges to its proposed alternative methods: electrocution and firing squad. The state has restocked pentobarbital, a tranquilizer, after passing a law to protect the identity of companies supplying the drug, which feared a public backlash.
The state supreme court authorized the scheduling of executions about every five weeks, an extraordinary pace that lawyers argued would put pressure on attorneys representing multiple defendants and put them at risk of execution because of the rushed process.
The first defendant to be executed last month was Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, who was executed a day after a key witness came forward to say he had lied in the trial and that Allah was innocent.
“It’s like an assembly line. The state is motivated to kill convicts as quickly as possible, and they do so despite evidence that might change their minds,” said Paul Bowers of the American Civil Liberties Union in South Carolina.
