Over pleas for mercy, South Carolina executes Richard Moore by lethal injection

[Pelican Press 0]

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Over pleas for mercy, South Carolina executes Richard Moore by lethal injection

Richard Moore was ********* Friday by lethal injection for the ******* of James Mahoney, a Spartanburg County store clerk. Moore, 59, is the second person ********* in South Carolina in just more than a month after a 13-year pause.

Moore’s ****** sentence was carried out at 6:24 p.m. Friday over

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from three of the jurors who convicted him, the judge who sentenced him and the former head of the South Carolina Department of Corrections who came to know Moore while he was on ****** row.

Moore is believed to be the only person in the history of South Carolina’s ****** penalty ********* for an armed robbery who did not bring the fatal ******* to the scene. And he is thought to be the last to have been sentenced to **** by a jury where

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In a rare dissent to a 2022 opinion upholding his sentence, former South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Kaye Hearn called Moore’s sentence “disproportionate,” his conviction by a nearly all-white jury a “relic of a bygone era” and proof “that our system of capital punishment is broken.”

Moore, an unemployed father of two who struggled for years with a ****** addiction, shot and ******* Mahoney during an altercation inside of Nikki’s Speed Mart, an all night store near Spartanburg.

The 42-year-old clerk who loved NASCAR and was remembered as a loving son and uncle was watching TV behind the counter when Moore entered the store.

Prosecutors say that Moore, who was unarmed, was robbing the store to fund his addiction. Over the years, Moore maintained that he was there to buy ***** and cigarettes. When he came up 12 cents short, an argument ensued over whether he could use coins from the change cup.

Mahoney drew a ****, which the larger Moore wrenched from his hand. A witness claimed Moore fired a shot at him, while Moore’s attorneys say forensics support that it was the clerk who fired the first shot. Mahoney drew a second **** and the two men opened ***** on each other at nearly point blank range.

Moore was hit in the arm; Mahoney was shot fatally in the heart.

Dripping blood, Moore grabbed $1,408 in cash and fled the store. He was arrested minutes later when he hit a telephone pole with his truck.

“I did it, I did it, I give up, I give up,” Moore told the officer at the scene.

Moore was convicted in 2001 after prosecutors removed all of the potential ****** jurors from his jury pool.

While Moore’s attorneys argued that the prosecutors had violated a rule that forbids attorneys from removing jurors because of their race, the U.S. Supreme Court declined Thursday to halt Moore’s ********** to hear arguments on the issue.

Who was Richard Moore?

Born in Michigan, Moore — who had eight siblings — was the only child in his family to graduate from high school. But an addiction to ****** ******** he developed as a teenager led him on a downward spiral into ******.

By 1999, Moore had already been convicted of a number of robberies and violent assaults in both South Carolina and Michigan. He was on probation, recently jobless and with two children, aged four and six.

In prison, Moore became a devout **********, dedicated himself to mentoring other inmates and took up painting.

Over the years, Moore stayed involved with his family, his son

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, and would encourage his children not to make the mistakes that he did.

“He’s not some sort of monster,” Lyndall said. “He’s just a guy who struggled, but always a guy with a good heart, you know, a normal guy trying to be a good father.”

He is a “reliable, consistent force for good, on ****** row,” wrote former S.C. Department of Corrections Director Jon Ozmint. “Commutation would have a positive influence on hundreds of offenders who would be impacted by Richard’s story of redemption and his positive example.”

In urging clemency for Moore, Ozmint wrote, “perhaps the most compelling reason to commute Richard’s sentence is precisely because he is at peace with whatever decision you reach.”

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#pleas #mercy #South #Carolina #executes #Richard #Moore #lethal #injection

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