Death row inmate makes last-minute plea for leniency after U.S. Supreme Court rejects stay

CNN
—

The US Supreme Court rejected this to halt Friday night’s scheduled execution of a black inmate in South Carolina who claimed prosecutors wrongly excluded black people from the all-white jury that convicted him.

With the lethal injection trial set to begin at 6 p.m., Richard Moore’s dwindling hope appears to be a plea for clemency from a Republican governor who said two years ago, when discussing Moore’s case, that he would not issue a commutation.

Gov. Henry McMaster won’t announce his decision on clemency until Friday at 5:45 p.m., he said Wednesday, noting: “The death penalty is a very serious decision regardless of the circumstances. That is a very permanent, very serious, awesome punishment, and it needs to be considered very, very carefully.”

McMaster told a reporter in 2022 about Moore’s case: “I have no intention of commuting any sentence. The jury has made their decision.”

More than two dozen people — including two jurors, the judge from Moore’s original trial and a former director of the state prison system — have asked McMaster to spare Moore’s life by granting him clemency, The Associated Press reported.

“This is definitely a part of my life that I would like to change, because I took a life, you know? I took someone’s life,” Moore said in a video released by his lawyers as part of his clemency petition.

Moore, 59, is the last person left on South Carolina’s death row to be convicted by a jury without black members, his lawyers say. He would be the second person to be put to death since the state resumed the death penalty after a 13-year hiatus, prompted by problems obtaining drugs for the lethal injection protocol, a problem other states have faced.

Moore was convicted of killing a white convenience store clerk, James Mahoney, during a robbery in 1999. Moore entered the Spartanburg County store unarmed and pulled Mahoney’s gun away from him. Mahoney then grabbed a second gun and shot Moore in the arm before Moore fired a fatal shot at Mahoney, prosecutors alleged.

Moore fled, taking a bag filled with more than $1,400 cash, they said.

Moore had claimed to prosecutors at the nation’s Supreme Court that he inadmissibly struck two black jurors in his 2001 murder trial because of their race, which the state denied. South Carolina officials argued that Moore had already made similar claims and lost, while also noting that one of his jurors was Hispanic. The Supreme Court denied his request without comment Thursday and there were no dissents.

Defense attorneys have also argued that Moore killed Mahoney in self-defense. “No other death penalty case in South Carolina has involved an unarmed suspect defending himself when the victim threatened him with a weapon,” they said in a statement.

Moore’s son, who was four years old when his father was charged, says his father deserves mercy.

“He is a human being who has made mistakes,” Lyndall Moore told the AP. “And this particular mistake led to the death of another human being. But his sentence is completely out of proportion to the actual crime.”

South Carolina expanded execution methods

The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that prosecutors cannot strike a potential juror based solely on race. If disputed, the state must provide a “race-neutral” reason for excluding the candidate.

In Moore’s case, prosecutor Trey Gowdy — who would later serve four terms as a Republican congresswoman — told the judge that the main reason a black jury candidate was removed was because she had tried to hide her criminal record during questioning, while he chose to rule out another because that person’s son had been convicted of murder, the state wrote in its opposition to Moore’s Supreme Court request.

A white jury candidate whose close relative was also charged with murder had also been beaten for the same reason, Gowdy told the judge at the time. According to the state, Moore’s counsel did not challenge Gowdy’s stated reasons at the time the court asked.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, 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 named. Moore’s attorneys responded Wednesday that the case’s “unique procedural background” should allow the justices to consider their arguments.

CNN contacted Gowdy for comment on Thursday. The GOP attorney general and governor’s offices did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on Moore’s petition to the nation’s Supreme Court.

Moore was convicted of murder and armed robbery, among other charges, after two hours of deliberation by the jury, which sentenced him to death after another hour of discussion, the Spartanburg Herald-Journal reported in 2001.

Moore opted to be executed by lethal injection, his lawyers say. After a row over South Carolina’s access to lethal injection drugs, McMaster signed a law in 2021 that also allows the state to execute by electrocution or firing squad, giving death row inmates the death penalty. choice.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than 1,600 people have been executed in the US since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Thirty-four percent were black, more than double the share of black US residents in 2023.

As for the clemency request, McMaster “intends to review everything I can in a timely manner,” the governor told reporters Wednesday.

In an earlier federal court request for a stay of execution, Moore’s attorneys raised concerns about McMaster’s past comments about leniency for death sentences, according to the ruling denying that request.

The statement, Moore’s attorneys had argued, shows that McMaster could not make a fair decision on a pardon request because as the state’s attorney general he would have to “give up years of his own work” in support of the death penalty.

McMaster told the court in response: “It is and is my intention and commitment to ensure that I understand the issues presented, including those arising from my review and consideration of requests, petitions and requests for clemency submitted to me by or on behalf of a convicted prisoner…’