By james art 
Richard Moore was executed Friday in South Carolina, becoming the second person executed in the state in just over a month, after a 13-year hiatus. Moore, 59, was convicted of killing James Mahoney in 1999 at a convenience store in Spartanburg, a city in northern South Carolina. Moore’s all-white jury convicted him of murder and armed robbery after only two hours of deliberation and sentenced him to death after just another hour.
Moore’s execution was all the more remarkable considering that when he walked into Nikki’s Speed Mart on September 16, 1999, he was unarmed. Moore is believed to be the only person in the history of South Carolina’s death penalty executed in connection with an armed robbery who did not bring the fatal weapon to the scene of the crime.
Both guns 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 who defended himself when the victim threatened him with a gun.”
Prosecutors say 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 made off with more than $1,400 in cash. Moore’s attorneys argued that he came to the store to buy beer and cigarettes and an argument arose when he was short 12 cents and wanted to use coins from the coin cup to complete his purchase.
On October 31, the US Supreme Court refused to hear Moore’s arguments for a retrial, clearing the way for his execution. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster refused to grant a pardon, despite receiving a petition with over 50,000 signatures calling for clemency. The pleas of the judge, three jurors and the former director of the state Department of Corrections also went unheeded.
In a final 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 have caused you all. To my children and grandchildren, I love you and I am proud of you.”
According to The State Gazette of Columbia, South Carolina, after witnesses were allowed to see the execution, prison officials administered a single dose of pentobarbital, a sedative, while Moore lay strapped to a gurney facing the ceiling. A minute after the lethal drug was administered, witnesses heard between four and six deep breaths followed by shallow breaths. His chest seemed to stop moving at 18:04
Witnesses reported that there was silence in the death chamber for the next 20 minutes. A prison medic pronounced Moore dead at 6:24 p.m. About 40 people, including one of Moore’s lawyers, opponents of the death penalty 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 v. Kentucky that the prosecutor’s peremptory challenges in a criminal case–dismissing jurors without a showing of good cause–cannot 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 represented Moore for more than a decade, filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking for a review of jury selection in Moore’s case to determine whether the prosecution struck black jurors because of their race . In a brief filed with the court on Oct. 29, South Carolina’s attorney general argued it was too late for Moore to raise the race issue with jurors because it had not been mentioned in some earlier appeals.
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 began 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, recently unemployed, and had two children, ages four and six.
Although he was in prison, he remained involved with his family, became a Christian and learned to paint. This is what his son Lyndell Moore said The state“He’s not some monster. He’s just a guy who was struggling, but always a good-hearted guy, you know, a normal guy trying to be a good father.
Former South Carolina Department of Corrections Director John Ozmint described Moore as “a reliable, consistent force for good on death row,” adding, “the commutation will have a positive impact on hundreds of offenders who will be influenced by Richard’s story of redemption and his positive example.”
Moore was the second person executed in South Carolina after a 13-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 a sworn statement saying he lied at trial when he named Owens as the shooter in exchange for a deal to avoid the death penalty or life without parole.
Before the moratorium on executions, South Carolina’s stockpile of lethal injection drugs was depleted, and no drug company would sell any more if they could be publicly identified. The state subsequently switched from a three-drug lethal injection protocol to a single-dose pentobarbital protocol.
In 2022, a South Carolina trial court issued an injunction preventing the state from carrying out executions by firing squad or the electric chair, ruling that those methods violated the state’s constitutional prohibition against “cruel, unusual, and corporal punishment.”
District Judge Jocelyn Newman cited experts who testified at trial that the inmates would experience excruciating pain whether their bodies were being “cooked” by the 2,000 volts of electricity in the 1912 electric chair or if their hearts were stopped by bullets. , assuming the three shooters hit their target.
The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled on July 31, 2024 that executions in the state could resume. The court ruled that the death penalty law was legal and humane because, in addition to lethal injection, the state legislature had authorized the use of the electric chair and firing squad as methods of execution.
“Courts have never held that death must be instantaneous or painless,” Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for 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 the state legislatures were indeed opposed to the infliction of pain. Four death row inmates filed suit arguing that all three methods constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
“The choice cannot be considered cruel because a condemned prisoner can choose for the state to use the method that he and his attorneys believe will cause him the least pain,” Associate Justice John Few wrote in the majority opinion for the Supreme state court.
South Carolina has already executed 45 people since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. There are currently 35 inmates on death row in the state.