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.