2nd SC inmate set for execution this year chooses to die by lethal injection

Restraints are shown on the lethal injection table in the execution chamber at the Utah State Correctional Facility after the Taberon Honie execution Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool)

COLUMBIA — South Carolina inmate Richard Moore has selected lethal injection as the method for his Nov. 1 execution, while his attorneys and family continue to fight for a reprieve.

Moore’s decision was filed with the state Supreme Court on Friday, two weeks before his scheduled execution, which is the deadline set by state law. If he had not made a choice, the default method is electrocution.

Moore’s attorneys are challenging his execution on multiple fronts.

The 59-year-old was convicted in 2001 by a Spartanburg County jury of murder, armed robbery, and assault with intent to kill in the death of gas station clerk James Mahoney two years earlier.

His attorneys are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution as excessive, noting he was unarmed when he went into the gas station, and he was sentenced by an all-white jury. The state Supreme Court has already declined to overturn his sentence on those arguments.

Beyond calling the sentence disproportionate, Moore’s son, Lyndall Moore, said his father is a changed man who clearly regrets what he did and has spent the last 20 years trying to make up for it, reports The Associated Press.

Moore’s inmate record shows zero disciplinary issues since his conviction.

Amnesty International has also gotten involved, publicly calling on Gov. Henry McMaster to have mercy on Moore and commute his sentence to life in prison.

That Moore entered the station unarmed demonstrates a “lack of premeditation that raises serious questions as to whether the crime rose to the level for which the death penalty is reserved in U.S. constitutional law,” reads Amnesty’s call to action. Its website urges people to write letters to McMaster.

No governor in South Carolina has granted clemency to a death row inmate since a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment.

A separate federal lawsuit seeks more information on the state’s supply of pentobarbital, the drug that will be used in the execution. That ongoing case, filed on behalf of several death row inmates, failed to stop last month’s execution of Freddie Owens, who was the first person executed in South Carolina in 13 years.

Then last week, Moore’s attorneys filed a new federal lawsuit arguing McMaster should not have the final say on clemency for Moore, since in his former role as the state’s attorney general, McMaster successfully fought Moore’s appeals. They also pointed to comments the governor made in 2022, when Moore was last scheduled for execution.

The federal judge said Tuesday she doesn’t think the law requires the governor to be impartial, but she asked McMaster’s attorneys to submit a signed statement assuring the court that he would fully consider Moore’s petition. They did so Thursday.

“As governor, it is and has been my firm intention and commitment to fulfill these obligations in all official matters and circumstances before me, including those involving capital punishment and executive clemency,” reads McMaster’s statement. “In such matters, it is and has been my intention and commitment to take care to understand the issues presented, including those from my review and consideration of applications, petitions, and requests for clemency presented to me by or on behalf of a condemned inmate in advance of an execution date.”

Moore becomes the second death row inmate this year to select lethal injection. The other option is death by firing squad, which the Legislature added in 2021 as part of the same law that reverted to the electric chair as the default. That law was an attempt to resume executions amid the state’s inability to restock its lethal injection drugs.

Two years ago, Moore chose death by firing squad as a better option than the electric chair, even as he continued to fight the constitutionality of both methods. That execution was ultimately halted amid legal challenges.

A separate law legislators passed last year, which guaranteed secrecy surrounding the drugs’ procurement, enabled the Department of Corrections to buy enough pentobarbital to carry out a death sentence by lethal injection.

Moore is the second of six inmates expected to be executed over the coming months after the state’s high court declared both electrocution and the firing squad constitutional.