South Carolina has executed a man on death row, despite widespread calls for his life to be spared, including from the judge who originally condemned him to death.
Richard Moore, 59, was killed by lethal injection on Friday evening, minutes after the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, announced he would not be granting him clemency.
Moore was put to death after an extraordinary push to save his life, which included advocacy letters from the state’s former corrections department director, three trial jurors, the judge who presided over the case and a former state supreme court justice. Supporters argued that he had become a role model behind bars. His two children, who remained close to him during his incarceration, also pleaded for mercy.
The execution began at 6.01pm, the Associated Press reported. Moore’s breathing became shallow and stopped around 6.04pm, and he was pronounced dead at 6.24pm. Moore’s longtime lawyer, who was in the room, could not fight back tears.
A prison spokesperson 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 deeply sorry for the pain and sorrow I caused you all. To my children and granddaughters, I love you and am so proud of you. Thank you for the joy you have brought to my life. To all of my family and friends, new and old, thank you for your love and support.”
Justice 360, the non-profit that represented Moore, condemned the execution in a statement, saying it “underscores the flaws in South Carolina’s death penalty system”: “Who is executed versus who is allowed to live out their lives in prison appears to be based on no more than chance, race, or status. It is intolerable that our State metes out the ultimate punishment in such a haphazard 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 put to death this year in South Carolina, which recently revived executions and is pursuing a rapid spree of killings.
The case drew widespread scrutiny over racial bias and doubts about the validity of Moore’s sentence.
An all-white jury convicted Moore, who is Black, of an armed robbery and the 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 their scuffle, both men were shot – Moore in the arm and Mahoney fatally in the chest. Moore took cash 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 overheard an argument, and then saw Moore with his hands on the clerk’s hands and that Moore fired in his direction. The witness wasn’t hit and said he played dead and didn’t see the rest of the encounter.
A forensic investigator hired by Moore’s lawyers reviewed crime scene evidence in 2017 and concluded the first shot had been fired while the two men were fighting over the gun.
Moore’s lawyers argued that, regardless of the details of the shootout, he shouldn’t be eligible for capital punishment, reserved for the “worst of the worst” murders, since he entered unarmed and had no premeditated plans for an armed robbery or homicide. In 2022, Kaye Hearn, a state supreme court justice, agreed, writing in a dissenting opinion that the death sentence was “invalid”, “disproportionate” and a “relic of a bygone era”.
Hearn said it was “stunning” prosecutors couldn’t identify a comparable death penalty case involving a robbery that began unarmed and noted that Spartanburg county, where Moore was prosecuted, had a history of “alarming” racial disparities in the death penalty; all but one of 21 cases from 1985 to 2001 involved white victims.
Moore’s team had also made a final appeal to the US supreme court, arguing that prosecutors had unlawfully removed two qualified Black jurors, but the court declined to stop the execution on Thursday.
In a clemency video submitted with Moore’s application this week, Jon Ozmint, former head of South Carolina’s corrections department, said he hoped the governor would “give Richard the rest of his life to continue to pour into the lives of others”. In an earlier letter, Ozmint said he was a proponent of capital punishment and had never recommended reversing a death sentence, but said staff “trusted” Moore as a “reliable and respected” man on death row.
“Commutation would have a positive influence on hundreds of offenders who would be impacted by Richard’s story of redemption and his positive example,” Ozmint wrote.
Gary Clary, the former circuit judge who imposed Moore’s death sentence, wrote to McMaster on Wednesday, saying he’d “studied the case of each person who resides on death row in South Carolina” and that Moore’s case was “unique”: “After years of thought and reflection, I humbly ask that you grant executive clemency to Mr Moore as an act of grace and mercy.”
Three jurors wrote that they supported commutation based on Moore’s rehabilitation. Thousands signed petitions to halt the execution.
Lindsey Vann, Moore’s attorney of 10 years, said she wasn’t aware of any other South Carolina case under the modern death penalty in which a judge who imposed the sentence backed clemency. She said on Thursday that Moore had tried to remain optimistic: “He’s grateful for all of the support, so that brings him some hope … but there are obviously difficult conversations, talking to people for what might be the last time.”
Moore had remained close to his two children, who had been visiting him behind glass since they were young. His daughter, Alexandria Moore, 31, recalled him teaching Spanish and creating puzzles through letters when she was a kid and said he’d become a beloved grandfather to her two daughters, telling the Guardian last week: “I will always be a daddy’s girl … Even with the physical distance, he is very much here and a part of my girls’ lives and my life.”
During his incarceration, Moore had leaned into faith, focused on painting and become friends with penpals, his lawyers said. His clemency video included a clip of an earlier interview, in which Moore expressed remorse: “This is definitely a part of my life I wish I could change, because I took a life … I broke the family of the deceased. I pray for the forgiveness of that particular family.”
Protesters gathered outside the Broad River prison in Columbia, leading prayers and holding “Save Richard Moore” and “Execute justice not people” signs.
“South Carolina’s elected officials do not care about the racism in the death penalty. They are more interested in using the system to win elections,” the 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 pause due to a lack of lethal injection supplies and challenges to its other proposed methods: electrocution and firing squads. The state restocked pentobarbital, a sedative, after it passed a law to shield the identities of companies supplying the drug, which had feared public backlash.
The state supreme court has authorized the scheduling of executions roughly every five weeks, an extraordinary pace that lawyers have argued would strain attorneys representing multiple defendants and risk botched executions due to the rushed process.
The first defendant executed last month was Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, who was put to death days after a central witness came forward to say he had lied at trial and that Allah was innocent.
“It’s like an assembly line. The state is motivated to kill condemned people as quickly as possible, and they do that despite evidence that might change their minds,” said Paul Bowers of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina.
