A South Carolina death row inmate is citing juror race in his request for a stay

CNN
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A black man scheduled to be executed for murder in South Carolina on Friday evening is asking the U.S. Supreme Court for a last-minute stay. The prosecution wrongly excluded black people from the jury that convicted him.

“After both parties exhausted their enforcement actions, an all-white jury with two white alternates was seated for Moore’s capital trial,” attorneys for 59-year-old Richard Moore wrote in their petition in late September. One of the 12 jurors was Hispanic, attorneys for the state noted in their response.

Moore is the last person left over on South Carolina's death row will be convicted by a jury with no black members, his defense attorneys say. He would be the second person to be executed since the state reinstated the death penalty after a 13-year hiatus caused by difficulties obtaining drugs for its lethal injection protocol, a problem other states have faced.

Moore was convicted of killing white supermarket clerk James Mahoney during a 1999 robbery. Moore, who entered the Spartanburg County store unarmed, took the gun away from Mahoney. 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 full of more than $1,400 in cash, they said.

Defense attorneys have argued Moore killed Mahoney in self-defense. “No other death penalty case in South Carolina has involved an unarmed defendant who defended himself when the victim threatened him with a gun,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, more than 20 people — including two jurors and the judge from Moore's original trial, as well as a former director of the state prison system — are asking the state's Republican governor to save Moore's life by granting him clemency, The Associated Press reports.

Governor Henry McMaster is considering this and will not announce his decision until Friday at 5:45 p.m. – minutes before the execution begins – he said on Wednesday.

“I intend to review everything I can in a timely manner,” the governor told reporters. “The death penalty is a very serious decision, regardless of the circumstances. This is a very permanent, very serious, terrible punishment and it needs to be considered very, very carefully.”

Moore's son, who was 4 at the time his father was charged, says his father deserves mercy.

“He is a person who has made mistakes,” Lyndall Moore told the AP. “And this particular mistake resulted in the death of another human being. But his punishment is completely disproportionate to the actual crime.”

South Carolina expanded execution methods

The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that prosecutors could not convict a potential juror based solely on race. In the event of a challenge, the state must provide a “race-neutral” reason for disqualifying the candidate.

In the Moore case, prosecutor Trey Gowdy — who later served four terms as a Republican congressman — told the judge that the main reason he rejected a black jury candidate was that she tried to hide her criminal record during questioning while he chose to do so to exclude another candidate because that person's son was convicted of murder, the state wrote, denying Moore's request to the Supreme Court.

A white jury candidate whose close family member was also charged with murder was also affected for the same reason, Gowdy told the judge at the time. According to the state, at the trial court's request, Moore's attorney did not object to Gowdy's stated reasons at this time.

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 juror race because it had not been mentioned in some previous appeals. Moore's lawyers responded Wednesday that the case's “unique procedural background” should allow the justices to consider their arguments.

CNN reached out to Gowdy for comment on Thursday. The attorney general's office and Republican governor's offices have not responded to CNN's request for comment on Moore's petition to the nation's highest court.

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

Moore has now opted for execution by lethal injection, his lawyers say.

The dispute over South Carolina's access to lethal injection led McMaster to sign a law in 2021 allowing the state to also carry out executions by electrocution or firing squad, giving death row inmates a choice.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than 1,600 people have been executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. 34 percent were black, more than double the proportion of black US citizens in 2023.

In an earlier federal court request for a stay of execution, Moore's attorneys expressed concern about McMaster's previous comments on clemency for death row inmates, according to the ruling denying that request. The governor told a reporter in 2022 about Moore's case: “I have no intention of commuting a sentence. The jury has made its decision.”

The statement, Moore's lawyers had argued, showed that McMaster could not make a fair decision on a clemency petition because he would have to “forgo years of his own work” to support the death penalty as attorney general.

McMaster responded to the court: “It is and has been my intention and obligation to take care to understand the issues presented, including those arising from my review and consideration of applications, petitions and clemency applications submitted to me by or on behalf of them were presented.” a condemned prisoner…”