South Carolina set to execute Richard Moore after Supreme Court rejects appeal

Nov. 1 (UPI) -- South Carolina is set to execute Richard Moore on Friday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeal.

Lawyers for Moore have also written to Gov. Henry McMaster asking for clemency.

The judge and two jurors from Moore's original trial are among those who have signed a petition calling for McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison.

"The trial judge who ultimately imposed the death sentence after the jury made their decision that the death penalty was appropriate," Moore's lawyer Lindsey Vann said in an interview with WYFF TV in Greenville, S.C.

"He has spent years reflecting on this case. and he has discovered that Richard's case is unique among all death penalty cases in South Carolina. And as a result of those years of reflection and thinking on this case, he has asked the governor to commute Richard's sentence."

McMaster, a Republican, is expected to wait until the last minute before announcing his decision.

Moore is set to be executed at the Broad River Correctional Institution Columbia for the 1999 killing of convenience store clerk James Mahoney during a robbery in Spartanburg S.C.

If the sentence is carried out, Moore would become the second inmate executed in South Carolina in 13 years.

The state executed Freddie Owens in September, the first death sentence carried out in South Carolina in over a decade.

South Carolina paused executions in 2011 when they could not get the lethal injection drugs required.

Moore was originally scheduled to be executed in 2022, choosing death by firing squad rather than the electric chair.

His lawyers and supporters have argued his case does not meet the requirements for capital murder.

Prosecutors contend Moore showed no remorse, leaving the scene of the robbery with $1,400 in cash and failing to call for help.

"There's no question in my mind that this wouldn't have been a death penalty case in most counties. There might've been some other solicitors that would've T'd it up and tried it that way but wouldn't have been successful," former South Carolina Department of Corrections Director John Ozmint told the Greenville News in an interview.

Ozmint has signed the petition asking for clemency, adding Moore has changed for the better during his decades in prison.

"I hope that Governor McMaster will give Richard the rest of his life to continue to pour into the lives of others."