Moore, 59, awaits clemency from the governor as his children plead for his life to be spared

South Carolina is on track to execute a man on death row on Friday, despite growing concerns about the validity of his sentence and objections from the judge who originally condemned him to death.

Richard Moore, 59, is due to be killed by lethal injection at 6pm unless the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, grants clemency. Moore’s children have pleaded for his life to be spared, and his resentencing efforts are now supported by the former corrections department director, two trial jurors, the judge who presided over the case and a former state supreme court justice.

The case has drawn scrutiny over racial bias and the unusual nature of his death sentence, and is part of a spate of rapid executions the state is pursuing.

  • _haha_oh_wow_
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    913 hours ago

    The system is broken and will continue to be broken until something fundamentally changes, but there are too many in power who only care about maintaining their power.

  • @[email protected]
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    2817 hours ago

    This whole thing reeks of corruption:

    South Carolina recently resumed executions after a 13-year pause due to a lack of lethal injection supplies and challenges to its other proposed methods, of electrocution and firing squads. The state restocked pentobarbital, a sedative, after it passed a law to shield the identities of companies supplying the drug, which had feared public backlash.

    The state supreme court has authorized the scheduling of executions roughly every five weeks, an extraordinary pace that lawyers argued would strain attorneys representing multiple defendants and risk botched executions due to the rushed process.

    • @[email protected]
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      2215 hours ago

      That’s crazy that the corporations don’t really mind assisting in the murder of human beings so long as the name of the company is kept from the public record.

      • skulblaka
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        1515 hours ago

        Profit is their God. So long as profit is made nothing else matters.

      • _haha_oh_wow_
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        313 hours ago

        It’s only a matter of time before this information comes to light, state governments are not usually great about keeping secrets or securing their tech.

  • TheTechnician27
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    21 hours ago

    I’m just so surprised that in addition to not deterring crime at all (and possibly making it marginally worse), not being humane whatsoever, and being far, far more expensive, it’s also completely wrong all the time.

    Anyone who still supports the death penalty state-sanctioned murder at this point is either grossly mis-/underinformed or is a “but it’s fine as long as we make really, really sure they did it!” person (not realizing there’s a decades-long appeal process or that administrations who use it don’t actually give a shit about the certainty of a conviction). That, or revenge just makes their pp hard and they genuinely don’t care about the fact it’s categorically worse in every way.

    • @[email protected]
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      1920 hours ago

      And on top of that.

      If you must have the death penalty (and really I’d challenge that but for the sake of argument let’s say they must).

      Then injections are one of the worst ways you can do it. Hanging and beheading are much more humane ways to end someone’s life.

      • @[email protected]
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        310 hours ago

        You can fuck up those too, including intentionally. If the hanging drop is too short, they’re strangled slowly instead of killed by the snap. If your beheading blade is dull or aimed poorly, it will probably not kill in one blow.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 hours ago

          I didn’t say they were perfect. They just seem less bad. At things stand, lethal injections simply do no go well as a standard.

      • TheTechnician27
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        19 hours ago

        Yeah, but injections look much more precise and clinical rather than like brutally murdering someone, so they keep up an appearance of humaneness to the public. So it’s clearly still the preferable choice.

    • nkat2112
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      1421 hours ago

      This is a brilliantly expressed comment and I couldn’t agree with you more. Thank you for posting this and have a good day.

  • @foggy
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    3721 hours ago

    Disgusting. I don’t have the words.

    I don’t have the words because I have 0 doubt that this man will be dead in less that 11 hours.

    No fucking way some republican governor in South Carolina is going to spare the life of a black man this close to an election that could damn well bring back slavery.

    Abhorrent.

  • @JustARaccoon
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    14 hours ago

    Why does the governor have any say in the judicial system? That’s fucked

  • @Philharmonic3
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    1319 hours ago

    What would you not do to save a life? Would you not break the law? Would you not interfere with “official proceedings”? “Laws are threats made by the dominant socio-political class in a given nation.” Fight back.

  • @[email protected]
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    117 hours ago

    This should have been a few years unfortunately he stole money after the gun was fired several times in the struggle. The clerk dying made the whole thing a much bigger problem. I’ll definitely agree this man should not be on death row. I do think he deserved a stint in prison for robbery, and unfortunately the moment he gained enough control of the weapon to “defend” himself it was now armed robbery that ended in a murder. If he would have left without taking any money this would all be a much different story. He could have plead self defense. The money is what made all the other charges stick.

    Am I not seeing the whole picture? Again, I don’t think he should be executed.