South Carolina executes Richard Moore despite pleas from the judge, jurors and former corrections department director

Richard Moore was executed in South Carolina on Friday, becoming the second person to be put to death in the state in just over a month, following a 13-year hiatus. Moore, 59, was convicted in the 1999 shooting of James Mahoney at a supermarket in Spartanburg, a city in northern South Carolina. Moore’s all-white jury convicted him of murder and armed robbery after just two hours of deliberation and sentenced him to death after just an hour.

Photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections of Richard Moore, who was executed Friday for the September 1999 murder of a store clerk. (AP Photo/South Carolina Department of Corrections)

Moore’s execution was all the more remarkable because when he entered Nikki’s Speed Mart on September 16, 1999, he was unarmed. Moore is believed to be the only person in South Carolina capital punishment history executed in connection with an armed robbery who did not bring the deadly weapon to the scene of the crime.

The two weapons involved were behind the counter when Moore entered the store. Moore’s attorneys argued that Moore killed Mahoney in self-defense, stating, “No other death penalty case in South Carolina has involved an unarmed defendant defending himself when the victim threatened him with a weapon.”

Prosecutors alleged that Moore pulled Mahoney’s gun away from him, and that Mahoney then grabbed a second gun and shot Moore in the arm before Moore fired the fatal shot. Moore fled with more than $1,400 in cash. Moore’s lawyers claimed he came to the store to buy beer and cigarettes and an argument ensued when he was 12 cents short and wanted to use coins from the change cup to complete his purchase.

On October 31, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Moore’s arguments to rehear his case, paving the way for his execution. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster refused to grant clemency despite receiving a petition with more than 50,000 signatures calling for clemency. Pleas from the judge, three jurors and the former director of the state corrections department also fell on deaf ears.

In a closing statement read by Moore’s attorney Lindsey Vann, Moore said in part: “To the family of Mr. James Mahoney: I am deeply sorry for the pain and sorrow I am causing all of you. To my children and granddaughters: I love you and am so proud of you.”

According to The Staatsblad of Columbia, South Carolina, after witnesses were allowed in to witness the execution, prison officials administered a single dose of pentobarbital, a sedative, as Moore lay strapped to a gurney, facing the ceiling. One minute after administering the lethal drug, witnesses heard four to six deep breaths, followed by shallow breaths. His chest appeared to have stopped moving at 6:04 p.m

Witnesses reported that there was silence in the death chamber for the next twenty minutes. A jail medical professional pronounced Moore dead at 6:24 p.m. About 40 people, including one of Moore’s attorneys, death penalty opponents and members of the clergy, held a vigil outside the prison.

Moore is believed to be the last person on South Carolina’s death row to be sentenced to death by an all-white jury. Moore was African American, Mahoney was white. The US Supreme Court ruled in 1986 Batson vs. Kentucky that a prosecutor’s peremptory challenges in a criminal case—dismissing jurors without providing just cause—should not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race. The court ruled that such challenges violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

On September 26, 2024, Justice 360 attorneys, who have represented Moore for more than a decade, filed a petition with the Supreme Court requesting a review of jury selection in Moore’s case to determine whether the prosecution targeted black jurors because of their race . In a letter filed with the court on October 29, South Carolina’s attorney general argued that it was too late for Moore to raise the issue of jurors’ race because it had not been raised in a number of previous appeals had been mentioned.

Moore was born in Michigan, one of nine siblings, and was the only child in the family to graduate from high school. But an addiction to crack cocaine came to dominate his life and he was convicted of several robberies and assaults to fund his habit. When he was arrested in 1999, he was on probation, had recently become unemployed and had two children, ages four and six.

Despite being in prison, he remained involved with his family, became a Christian and learned to paint. His son Lyndall Moore told it The state“He’s not some monster. He’s just a guy who’s going through a hard time, but always a guy with a good heart, you know, a normal guy trying to be a good father.

Jon Ozmint, former director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, described Moore as a “reliable, consistent force for good, on death row,” adding, “Commutation would positively impact hundreds of offenders who would be affected through Richard’s story of redemption and his positive example.”

Moore was the second person executed in South Carolina after a thirteen-year hiatus. Freddie Owens, 46, was executed on September 20, 2024 for the murder of Irene Graves, 41. Owens was executed just days after a key prosecution witness gave an affidavit saying he lied during the trial when he killed Owens as the shooter mentioned. in exchange for a deal to avoid the death penalty or life without parole.

Before executions were temporarily halted, supplies of lethal injection drugs in South Carolina had run out and no pharmaceutical company would sell them anymore if they could be publicly identified. The state then changed from a three-drug lethal injection protocol to a single-dose pentobarbital protocol.

In 2022, a South Carolina court issued an order banning the state from carrying out executions using a firing squad or the electric chair, ruling that these methods violate the state’s constitutional ban on “cruel, unusual and corporal punishment’.

Judge Jocelyn Newman quoted experts who testified during the trial that prisoners would feel terrible pain if their bodies were “cooked” by 2,000 volts of electricity in the 1912-built electric chair, or if their hearts were stopped by bullets, assuming the three shooters were hit. their purpose.

The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled on July 31, 2024 that executions could resume in the state. The court ruled that the death penalty was legal and humane because the state legislature had authorized the use of the electric chair and firing squad as methods of execution in addition to lethal injection.

“Courts have never held that death must be immediate or painless,” Grayson Lambert, an attorney from Gov. McMaster’s office, wrote in his argument before the state Supreme Court in February.

The state Supreme Court reasoned that the death penalty law was legal because the choice between the three methods showed that state lawmakers were sincerely opposed to the infliction of pain. Four death row inmates had filed a lawsuit, arguing that all three methods constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

“Choice cannot be considered cruel because the convicted prisoner can choose to have the state use the method that he and his lawyers believe will cause him the least pain,” Associate Justice John Few wrote in the Supreme Court majority opinion of the state.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, South Carolina has now executed 45 people since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. There are currently 35 inmates on death row in the state.