The South Carolina Supreme Court on Friday issued an execution notice for Richard Moore, who was convicted of shooting a convenience store clerk. He is scheduled to die on Nov. 1.
Moore’s upcoming execution will likely attract widespread attention, because unlike most killings that qualify for the death penalty, his murder was a haphazard “robbery gone bad,” and not a deliberate or especially monstrous killing, as a dissenting S.C. Supreme Court associate justice described it in a 2022 opinion in which the majority of justices upheld the validity of Moore’s death sentence.
“The majority completely loses sight of the vast difference between a ‘robbery gone bad’ and a planned and premeditated murder,” wrote Associate Justice Kaye Hearn, now retired, in her lone dissent outlining how different Moore’s killing was from other killings that qualify for the death penalty.
“The death penalty should be reserved for those who commit the most heinous crimes in our society, and I do not believe Moore’s crimes rise to that level,” Hearn wrote, calling South Carolina’s system “broken.”
In 1999, Moore walked into Nikki’s Speedy Mart convenience store in Spartanburg County unarmed. His goal was to rob the store to buy cocaine, according to the prosecution.
Moore got into a fight with the store clerk, James Mahoney, who had a gun. The gun went off and killed the store clerk.
Just before that scuffle took place, Moore got hold of the Mahoney’s gun and fired a shot at a bystander, but missed, a 2022 S.C. Supreme Court opinion said in describing the event. The bystander “dropped to the floor and played dead,” according to the opinion.
“Moore was shot in his left arm during the incident. There was no evidence that Moore entered the store with a gun. Rather, the forensic evidence established Moore killed Mahoney with a gun that belonged to the store’s owner,” the Supreme Court opinion said.
After leaving the crime scene, Moore got into a car accident that attracted the attention of a passing police officer. When a police officer pulled over, Moore got out of his truck, laid down on the road and said “I did it. I did it, I give up, I give up.””
A cash bag from the convenience store containing $1,408 was found in the truck.
Moore was convicted in 2001 of murder, armed robbery, possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime and assault with intent to kill. It took the jury just two hours to decide on the guilty verdict. Jurors could have recommended a life sentence without parole. Instead, Moore was given the death penalty.
In its 2022 Supreme Court opinion, the majority of justices wrote, “After hearing the evidence at trial, a jury found Moore intentionally shot and killed the store employee during an armed robbery and he endangered the life of a bystander for the obvious purpose of eliminating the only eyewitness to the murder. The robbery in this case could have resulted in two deaths but for the astute actions of the eyewitness, who ‘played dead’ when Moore shot at him.”
Justices in the majority were former Chief Justice Don Beatty, who wrote the opinion, and associate justices John Few, George “Buck” James and John Kittredge, now the current chief justice.
Moore did not dispute his guilt, according to The State’s previous reporting.
In 2022, Moore said that he wished to die by firing squad rather than electrocution , the two options available at the time. In a statement, he wrote that he believed that neither option was legal or constitutional.
“I believe this election is forcing me to choose between two unconstitutional methods of execution, and I do not intend to waive any challenges to electrocution or firing squad by making an election,” Moore wrote.
Moore was one of four inmates who filed a lawsuit in 2022 alleging that the two methods of execution at the time — electrocution and firing squad — were unconstitutional. At the time, the state was unable to obtain drugs for lethal injection. The drugs became available after the state passed a law shielding the identity of the drug companies.
On Sept. 20, Freddie Owens was killed by lethal injection , the state’s first execution in 13 years. Now, 31 people on South Carolina’s death row await execution. Several have exhausted their appeals.
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