SC is about to be guilty of another murder if Richard Moore is executed | Opinion
South Carolina is about to commit yet another first-degree murder. It plans to snuff out Richard Bernard Moore’s life on Friday, the state’s second such state-sanctioned murder in a little over a month.
I know it’s repetitive to keep noting South Carolina’s hypocrisy. Most of the state’s underpinning purport to be “pro-life” with a supposedly ”pro-life” majority of General Assembly members, state Supreme Court and governor even as it commits murder while turning everyday correctional workers into accomplices. They are the ones getting their hands dirty, not the suits in Columbia.
We mustn’t look away as state-sanctioned murder becomes commonplace after a more than decade-long shuttering of South Carolina’s machinery of death.
True pro-life states would not commit themselves to murder. Moore will not be the last murder.
True pro-life states would know you don’t allow government officials to kill people unless absolutely necessary, say a serial killer on the loose trying to kill again, a mass shooter armed with an assault rifle or a man with a bomb strapped to his chest in the middle of downtown.
True pro-life states would not want to be in league with Bangladesh, Iraq Saudi Arabia and the like, where the death penalty remains in effect even though it has been abolished in most countries.
State-sanctioned murder, either by firing squad, electric chair or lethal injection is immoral. It’s a stain on the conscience of South Carolina, a state with far too many similar stains.
All such state-sanctioned murders are wrong. Moore’s would be particularly egregious. In 1999, an unarmed Moore walked into a convenience store. He intended to rob it. The clerk, James Mahoney, pulled out two guns to defend himself, as was his right. Moore took one of Mahoney’s guns. Both men were shot during a scuffle. Mahoney died and Moore was convicted.
There’s no getting around what Moore did. Despite having no intent to kill, he killed. He took Mahoney’s life. But it’s not the type of crime that usually ends with a death sentence, and should not have. Moore didn’t premeditate Mahoney’s killing the way the state is premeditating Moore’s.
According to anti-death penalty non-profit Justice 360, “no other South Carolina death penalty case has involved an unarmed defendant who defended himself when the victim threatened him with a weapon.”
Prosecutors struck all potential Black jurors from serving during Moore’s trial, making him the last man sent to South Carolina’s death row by a jury without a single Black person on it, according to a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s why two jurors, the trial judge and a former head of South Carolina Department of Corrections have all spoken out against Friday’s potential state-sanctioned murder.
The death penalty is wrong.
The death penalty is not pro-life.
The death penalty should be abolished.
If you believe none of that and don’t care for Moore — even if you hate him and what he was convicted of doing — you should want a system that decides who should live or die to be fair.
The system has shown it is anything but.
Justice360 wants Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to grant Moore clemency. If granted, McMaster will prevent another premeditated state-sanctioned murder on his watch.
Justice360 is hoping enough South Carolinians sign a petition to convince McMaster there are an adequate number of true pro-life residents in this self-described pro-life state to change course.
McMaster has all but vowed that executions will go forward, as long as he can be sure the system works as designed.
It is working as designed. That’s why Black men have been over-represented on South Carolina’s death row, just as they are in the rest of the state’s prison system. Crimes committed against white people are more likely to lead to death sentences than those with Black victims.
Even in the people the state chooses to murder, South Carolina has found a way to value white lives more than Black ones. But the state shouldn’t be murdering anyone at all.