COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina inmate scheduled to be executed in just over three weeks is asking a federal judge to take away the power of granting clemency from the governor who is a former state attorney general and place it with a parole board.
The South Carolina constitution gives the governor the sole right to spare an inmate’s life, and Gov. Henry McMaster’s lawyers said he intends to retain it.
Lawyers for Richard Moore are arguing that McMaster cannot fairly consider the inmate’s request to reduce his death sentence to life without parole because for eight years starting in 2003 he was the state’s lead prosecutor and oversaw attorneys who successfully fought to uphold Moore’s death sentence.
“For Moore to receive clemency, McMaster would have to renounce years of his own work and that of his former colleagues in the Office of the Attorney General,” the attorneys wrote in asking a federal judge to pause the execution until the matter can be fully resolved.
McMaster has taken tough-on-crime stances and also in the past said he is against parole. The governor said in 2022 that he had no intention to commute Moore’s sentence when an execution date was a possibility, Moore’s attorneys said in court papers filed Monday.