About 25 people protested Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, outside Broad River Correctional Center calling for an end to South Carolina’s death penalty and clemency for Richard Moore an hour ahead of his scheduled execution. (Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Richard Moore will be executed Friday by lethal injection, despite calls for clemency from three jurors and the judge who sent him to death row.
Gov. Henry McMaster denied Moore’s request for clemency. The governor was Moore’s last chance at avoiding the death chamber after the U.S. Supreme Court declined Thursday to halt the execution.
Moore, 59, was sentenced to death in 2001 for killing a gas station clerk two years prior. He is set to be the second death row inmate to die since executions resumed in September.
Two jurors, the trial judge, and the state’s former corrections director were among more than two dozen people who wrote letters to McMaster as part of a clemency application, submitted Wednesday, asking the governor to instead give Moore life in prison.
A third juror joined their calls Friday, saying Moore “appears to be a positive influence on his peers” while in prison, according to an email provided by Moore’s attorneys.
“I understand that Mr. Moore has shown much regret, and changed his life,” juror Jennifer Stone wrote. “I also see that he has children that love him and want him in their life.”
Four more inmates have exhausted their appeals processes, making them eligible for death warrants. Executions in the state are expected to continue every five weeks through March.
The crime
Moore entered Nikki’s Speedy Mart in Spartanburg around 3 a.m. on Sept. 16, 1999. He went first to the store’s cooler, then to the counter, where 42-year-old clerk James Mahoney was watching the news for information on a hurricane, according to court documents.
Terry Hadden, a regular customer playing video poker nearby, testified during Moore’s trial that he turned after hearing Mahoney say, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hadden, who was blind in one eye, told jurors he saw Moore holding both of Mahoney’s hands in one of his own, with a gun in the other hand.
What happened between Moore and Mahoney that night remains unclear. Prosecutors said Moore, who entered the store unarmed, took the gun the store owner kept behind the counter. Moore, who had just lost his job, wanted to rob the store to get money to buy crack cocaine, prosecutors argued.
Moore didn’t testify at his original trial, but in a later appeals hearing, he said he and Mahoney got into an argument because Moore was a few cents short on his purchase. Mahoney took out his gun, which he kept in his waistband for protection. Moore managed to get the other gun from behind the counter and shot Mahoney in self-defense, his attorneys have said.
Moore fired at Hadden, who fell to the floor and played dead, Hadden testified. He didn’t see what happened next. At some point, Mahoney shot Moore in the left arm, and Moore shot Mahoney through the heart.
Before he left, Moore stepped over Mahoney’s body and took a blue vinyl bag containing $1,408, according to court documents.
Moore, still bleeding, drove to his drug dealer’s house and asked to buy cocaine, or for his dealer, George Gibson, to take him to the hospital, Gibson testified. When Gibson refused, Moore drove off.
On his way out, he hit a pole, attracting the attention of a police officer. The officer came over, and Moore got out of the car, allegedly saying, “I did it. I did it. I give up. I give up,” the officer later testified.
The stolen money, covered in blood, sat in the front seat of Moore’s truck, alongside an open pocket knife, the officer testified.
Moore, who is Black, was convicted two years later, in 2001, by a jury with no Black members.
His attorneys have argued repeatedly and unsuccessfully that prosecutors struck potential Black jurors because of their race. White jurors with similar backgrounds to the dismissed Black candidates, including criminal histories and convicted loved ones, were allowed to stay, Moore’s attorneys argued in a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The state’s prosecutors have maintained the attorneys in that trial did not consider race in removing jurors. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Thursday in an order declining to halt Moore’s execution.
Moore’s attorneys claim they can prove Mahoney fired the first shot, which struck the wall above Hadden. The placement of shell casings found at the crime scene supports Moore firing in self-defense, private forensic investigator Robert Tressel said in a statement included with Moore’s clemency application.
But no court ever agreed to hear that evidence because the rules around appeals are so strict, defense attorney Lindsey Vann said.
‘Worst of the worst’
Retired Circuit Court Judge Gary Clary, who oversaw Moore’s 2001 trial and death sentence, called for Moore to receive clemency in a letter submitted to the governor Wednesday.
“In no way do I quibble with the jury’s verdict, and I make no excuse on behalf of Mr. Moore for his actions that resulted in the death of James Mahoney,” wrote Clary, a Republican who was elected to the state House after he retired from the bench.
“Over the years, I have studied the case of each person who resides on death row in South Carolina,” his letter continued. “Richard Bernard Moore’s case is unique, and after years of thought and reflection, I humbly ask that you grant executive clemency to Mr. Moore as an act of grace and mercy.”
Clary, who represented part of Pickens County for three terms, did not elaborate on what he felt made Moore’s case unique.
But what stood out for former Corrections Director Jon Ozmint, he wrote in his own letter, was that Moore entered the store unarmed. People have received life sentences for much worse crimes than Moore’s, Ozmint wrote.
“There simply is no rational argument to be made that the death penalty is sought and applied consistently — county by county — in our state,” Ozmint wrote to the governor. “That does not make the death penalty ineffective or unconstitutional. However, it seems fair consideration for you as chief magistrate in our state in making a clemency decision.”
In a 2022 dissenting opinion to the state Supreme Court upholding Moore’s sentence, then-Justice Kaye Hearn made a similar argument.
“In my view, entering a convenience store unarmed falls well short of engaging in a cold, calculated, and premeditated murder,” Hearn wrote. “While tragic and heinous to the victim and his family, Moore’s crime does not represent the ‘worst of the worst’ in terms of those murders reserved for the death penalty.”
Moore’s sentence also highlights how Black people who commit crimes with white victims, like in Moore’s case, are more likely to be considered for or receive the death penalty, Hearn wrote. Between 1985 and 2001, the time of Moore’s trial, the solicitor’s office in Spartanburg County sought the death penalty for 21 cases. In all but one, the victim was white, Hearn wrote.
“Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Moore’s case highlights many of the pitfalls endemic to the death penalty, beginning with the role race plays,” Hearn wrote.
Of the 31 men on death row Friday, including Moore, 14 are Black and 17 are white, according to the Department of Corrections. The population of South Carolina is 27% Black and 64% white, according to Census data.
James Mahoney
Mahoney started working at the convenience store three years earlier, after a broken leg made him unable to do his previous job at the car wash down the street. A lifelong fan of NASCAR, Mahoney was known to help customers with car trouble, even lending someone his own tire iron the night he was killed, the two store owners testified during Moore’s sentencing.
Mahoney’s parents had been trying to convince him to move to Pennsylvania with them so they could help him with his health issues. But Mahoney wanted to stay in Spartanburg, where he had grown up, with his sister, his father testified.
He and his younger sister, Kathy Kelley, were close. Mahoney had dinner with her and her three children every Sunday night, and he regularly came over to help quiz them on spelling words before quizzes. He taught Kelley’s oldest daughter, his goddaughter, how to drive, Kelley told the jury.
On the children’s birthdays, Mahoney would take them to the mall and “let them buy whatever they wanted to buy,” Kelley told the jury during Moore’s sentencing trial.
“In fact, a week before he was killed, he told my youngest daughter that he would take her to Nikki’s when they relocated, and they would have lunch together. They would have hot dogs,” Kelley said, according to court documents. “And now that will never happen.”
Mahoney’s family has not spoken publicly in the weeks leading up to Moore’s execution.
Richard Moore
Moore grew up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, with seven siblings, a counselor who evaluated Moore during his appeals process wrote in a letter to the governor.
Friends and relatives recalled Moore as a quiet, respectful child who enjoyed hunting and fishing with his grandfather, they wrote in letters included with his clemency application. As he got older, he was swept up in the crack epidemic along with many friends and neighbors, wrote childhood friend Daryl Talley.
Moore moved to Spartanburg when his partner at the time, Lynda Byrd, got a job there in 1991, Byrd said during Moore’s sentencing trial.
Byrd and Moore had two children, Alexandria and Lyndall. Moore was helping Alexandria, 8 at the time, learn Spanish by sending letters back and forth, Byrd testified.
Before 1999, Moore had been convicted of several other assaults and robberies in both Michigan and Spartanburg, prosecutors said during his sentencing.
But Moore has changed during his time in prison, people who know Moore wrote to the governor in requests for clemency. Two jurors pointed to Moore’s “rehabilitation” in brief notes asking McMaster to instead give him life in prison.
On death row, Moore was baptized as a Christian. Every Sunday several years ago, he called Pastor Rick Russ, who he met while Russ was preaching on death row, to do virtual communion together. One day as they chatted, Moore asked Russ to buy him some painting supplies, Russ said during a Thursday night vigil.
In 2018, Russ received a package. Inside was an acrylic painting depicting the Nativity scene, with a note on the back that read, “Artist: Richard B. Moore.”
During the 23 years Moore spent in prison, he had only two disciplinary infractions, Ozmint wrote to McMaster. One was for having Skittles outside his cell, and the other was for using disrespectful language toward an officer. Both were in his first few years in custody, Ozmint wrote.
If Moore was allowed to live out the rest of his life with the general prison population, he would have been “a powerful force for good,” helping younger offenders get on the right track, Ozmint wrote.
Moore was “a true believer,” Ozmint said in a video included with Moore’s clemency application.
When Ozmint oversaw executions as prison director between 2003 and 2011, the last thing he would tell inmates was, “I’ll see you on the other side,” he said.
“I know I’ll see Richard on the other side,” Ozmint said.
Moore’s top priority always remained his children, advocates for clemency wrote.
Alexandria Moore’s 5-year-old daughter, Amaya, has gotten to know her grandfather through virtual calls. When she hears the phone ring, she asks, “Is that Pa Pa?” Moore’s attorneys wrote in his clemency application.
“Even though my father has been away for a lot of my life, that still has not stopped him from making a big impact in my life, a positive impact, and I would love for Amaya to get that from him as well,” Alexandria Moore said in a video. “He is a great man, and I want her to know her grandfather as the man that he is, and that’s wonderful.”
Moore’s children, who were 7 and 8 at the time of his trial, were not always receptive to Moore’s attempts to contact them.
But over the years, they came to forgive him for what he had done, according to a letter written by his son, Lyndall Moore.
“My father has grown into a person committed to taking responsibility for his actions and to doing his absolute best to lead a life of faith and good deeds,” Lyndall Moore wrote. “Should he be executed, we would not be ridding ourselves of a violent criminal nor a threat to others; rather, we would be losing a clear testament to the fact that human beings are capable of reflecting on and seeking redemption for their worst actions, and that a troubled past is not guarantee of a troubled future.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
