COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s high court on Friday set a date of Nov. 1 to put to death a man who killed a store clerk a quarter-century ago, the second of an expected six executions in about six months as the state ramps up its use of capital punishment after a 13-year pause.
Richard Moore went unarmed into Nikki’s Speedy Mart in Spartanburg County to rob it in September 1999 and killed James Mahoney in a shootout after taking one of two guns from him, authorities said. Moore, who is Black, is the only man on South Carolina’s death row to have been convicted by a jury that did not have any African Americans.
Moore’s lawyer said no one has ever been put to death in South Carolina in modern times who was unarmed initially and then defended themselves when threatened with a weapon.
“Moore’s execution would not be an act of justice; it would be an arbitrary act of vengeance. Moore is not the ‘worst of the worst’ for whom the death penalty is supposed to be reserved. Instead, his death sentence is based on racial discrimination that the judicial system has so far failed to correct,” attorney Lindsey Vann said in a statement.