Jurors, judge and former prison director all ask for mercy for condemned South Carolina inmate

By JEFFREY COLLINS The Associated Press

This photo provided by Justice 360 shows death row inmate Richard Moore at Kirkland Reception and Evaluation Center in Columbia, S.C., Aug. 17, 2018. (Justice 360 via AP)[ASSOCIATED PRESS]

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina death row inmate Richard Moore has more than 20 people asking the governor to spare his life in a clemency petition filed Wednesday, just two days before he is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1999 killing of a store clerk.

There are two jurors and the judge from his original trial. There is a former director of the state prison system who says Moore deeply regrets his crime and is a force for good behind bars both for fellow inmates and his children and grandchildren.

Also asking for clemency are six childhood friends, five relatives, several former attorneys who said Moore still checks on their families after they couldn’t keep him off death row, and the partner of a psychologist whose examination of Moore led to a deep friendship for them both, according to Moore’s petition.

“I have often wondered why Richard would rather spend his life in a prison cell than end this hell he must encounter every day. When I asked him, he told me that he finds that he now has something to offer the world,” Ravi Walsh wrote in 42 pages of letters sent to Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, the sole person with the power to take Moore off death row.

No governor has offered clemency to any of the 44 inmates executed in South Carolina since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976. No other state has put so many inmates to death without sparing anyone.

McMaster has promised to review Moore’s petition thoroughly. As is customary, the governor has said he won’t announce his decision until minutes before Friday’s scheduled 6 p.m. EDT execution.

Moore’s lawyers said clemency is an act of grace and mercy and should mostly focus on what Moore, 59, has done since he shot and killed James Mahoney in a shootout at a Spartanburg convenience store in September 1999.

Moore is a born-again Christian who mentors his fellow inmates on isolated death row, and if his sentence is reduced to life without parole, his good influence can spread to many more prisoners, said Jon Ozmint, who was director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections from 2003 to 2011.

“His story and manner of living would allow him to be an influential force for good in the general population with an ability to have a positive impact on the most recalcitrant and hopeless of young offenders,” wrote Ozmint, adding he supports the death penalty and has never advocated for another inmate for clemency.

The petition includes a video with segments of an interview with Moore.

“This is definitely part of my life I wish I could change. I took a life. I took someone’s life. I broke the family of the deceased,” Moore said. “I pray for the forgiveness of that particular family.”

Prosecutors and the family of Mahoney have not spoken publicly in the weeks leading up to the execution. In the past, Mahoney’s family have said they suffered deeply and want justice to be served.

Moore’s clemency petition said his attorneys didn’t provide him with the best defense at his 2001 trial. They include a different analysis of the crime scene along with Moore’s version of what happened that shows the clerk pulled a gun on Moore after the two argued because he was 12 cents short for what he wanted to buy.

Moore said he wrestled that gun from the clerk’s hand and Mahoney pulled a second weapon. Moore was shot in the arm and fired back, killing Mahoney with a bullet to the chest. Moore then went behind the counter and stole about $1,300.

No one else on South Carolina’s death row started their crime unarmed and with no intention to kill, Moore’s current attorneys said.

Ozmint and others said the death penalty should be reserved for the worst crimes and not sought arbitrarily. Current Solicitor Barry Barnette, who was an assistant prosecutor on Moore’s case, didn’t seek the death penalty several years ago for Todd Kohlhepp, who killed seven people including a woman he raped and tortured for days.

Lawyers for Moore, who is Black, also have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution to let a lower court review whether it was fair that no African Americans were on the jury that considered Moore’s fate in Spartanburg County, which was 20% Black in the 2000 U.S. Census.

Moore’s son and daughter said he has remained engaged in their lives. He now has grandchildren whom he sees on video calls. Several letter writers mentioned the harm to them if Moore is removed from their lives.

“He does not make excuses for his actions — his only interest is staying alive so he can serve as an example to get those most at risk of going down a similar path and so he can play as much of a role as possible in the lives of his family,” son Lyndall Moore said,

In a video with the clemency petition, Ozmint said when he paid his last visit to inmates before their executions he would tell them that he would “see them on the other side.” He said the most compelling reason to give Richard Moore mercy is that he will be at peace with whatever is decided — whether he is in heaven or left on Earth to do good deeds.

“I know I’ll see Richard on the other side. I just don’t know when that will be,” Ozmint said. “I hope that Gov. McMaster will give Richard the rest of his life to pour into the lives of others.”