Richard Moore, 59, was executed this Friday in South Carolina, United States, for a murder he claimed to have committed in self-defense. This is the 21st execution in the country since the start of the year.
Convicted in the American state of South Carolina (southeast) by an exclusively white jury for the murder of a cashier in 1999, which he claimed to have committed in self-defense, Richard Moore, 59, was executed this Friday, November 1, according to American media.
His execution is the 21st in the United States since the start of the year. They were all carried out by lethal injection, with the exception of two in Alabama (south) by nitrogen inhalation, a method denounced by the UN, which compared the practice to a form of “torture”.
The accused was sentenced to death in 2001 for the murder of James Mahoney, a convenience store cashier. Richard Moore had clarified that he entered the business without a weapon.
An altercation then broke out and the cashier pulled out a weapon. Both men were wounded, James Mahoney fatally. Richard Moore then left the store after taking money from the cash register.
The death penalty abolished in 23 of the 50 American states
A petition to spare him had been signed by more than 50,000 people. The initiative had received support from a former South Carolina Department of Corrections director, Jon Ozmint, who, in a video recording, pointed out “that this would not have been a death penalty case in most States”.
The judge who presided over the trial, Gary Clary, wrote to the governor urging “clemency,” saying that Richard Moore’s case was “unique” among South Carolina’s death row inmates.
His lawyers notably argued that he was the only one of them to have been tried by a jury that did not include any black people.
