Despite Calls To Spare His Life, South Carolina Executes Richard Moore

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 34% of people executed since 1976 are Black—double their share of the U.S. population in 2023.

As previously reported by BLACK ENTERPRISE, South Carolina faced backlash and protests over the scheduled execution of Richard Moore. Despite the outcry, Moore was executed by the state on Nov. 1.

According to CNN, Moore was executed only one day after the Supreme Court declined Moore’s request for a stay on the grounds that prosecutors created a racially exclusive all-white jury.

In addition, Moore requested clemency from South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster but McMaster denied the request, in keeping with comments he made in 2022 regarding Moore’s case.

Moore’s son, Lyndall Moore, who was four at the time Moore killed James Mahoney, a Spartanville store clerk, said that his father should have received mercy.

“He’s a human being who made mistakes,” Lyndall Moore said to the Associated Press. “And this particular mistake led to the death of another human being. But his sentence is completely disproportionate to the actual crime.”

At a South Carolina Department of Corrections news conference on Nov. 1, Chrysti Shain, the department’s spokesperson, announced the 59-year-old Richard Moore’s last words.

“To the family of Mr. James Mahoney, I am deeply sorry for the pain and sorrow I caused you. To my children and granddaughters, I love you and I 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,” the statement read.

Although McMaster eventually denied Moore’s request to have his sentence commuted into a life sentence, and told reporters on Oct. 30 that he was taking it into serious consideration, his comments about the case in 2022 seemed flippant.

“I have no intention to commute a sentence. The jury made their decision,” he told a reporter in 2022.

Those comments worried Moore’s attorneys, who argued in court that McMaster “would have to renounce years of his own work” while he was South Carolina’s Attorney General before becoming its Governor.

Previously, the state had not publicly clarified its “race-neutral” reasons for dropping the last two Black jurors from the pool during Moore’s trial, but in its opposition to Moore’s request, the State of South Carolina said they were removed because one woman tried to hide her criminal record and another person had a son who had been convicted of murder.

As the State of South Carolina argued that it was too late to make an argument regarding the race of jurors, partly because it had not been raised in earlier appeals, the state also pointed out that Moore’s counsel failed to make that argument in the original proceedings.

According to his attorneys, Moore chose to be executed via lethal injection, and with his execution, Moore joined over 1,600 people who have been executed since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 34% of all people executed since 1976 are Black, which, per U.S. Census figures, is double the proportional population of Black people in America in 2023.

According to USA Today, Moore’s legal team at Justice 360 believes this disproportionate figure nationally is also present in South Carolina’s justice 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,” the lawyers said. “It is intolerable that our State metes out the ultimate punishment in such a haphazard way.”