The son of a death row inmate, who had previously requested a firing squad execution but now faces a lethal injection next week, is pleading with South Carolina’s governor to spare his life.
“He’s not some sort of monster,” Lyndall Moore, 30, told The State in an interview Wednesday. “He is hardly the ‘worst of the worst’ type of man. He’s just a father who struggled with drug addiction, which resulted in a lot of horrible decisions and awful events that brought us to where we are today.”
A almost all-white jury convicted Lyndall’s father, Richard Moore, 56, of the 1999 murder of 42-year-old store clerk James Mahoney in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Moore entered the business unarmed and argued with Mahoney about change, according to court filings. Mahoney pulled a gun, which Moore disarmed, forcing the clerk to draw another firearm. Both men shot each other, but Mahoney died of his injuries.
Prosecutors asserted that Moore’s motivation to rob the company was to obtain cocaine.
Lyndall, who was 7 years old at the time of his father’s execution, observed, “He’s just a guy who struggled, but always a guy with a good heart, you know, a normal guy trying to be a good father.”
Moore has garnered significant support over the years, including former South Carolina Department of Corrections Director Jon Ozmint, who argues that Moore’s two decades in prison have transformed him into a changed, rehabilitated man.
In a letter to Gov. Henry McMaster begging for Moore’s release, Ozmint described Moore as “one of several reliable and respected inmates on the row” who has “continued to live an exemplary life,” according to the site. “In that regard, our criminal justice system has already achieved its highest and most lofty purpose in the life of Richard Moore,” Ozmint wrote in his essay.
With only eight days to live, Lyndall hopes that the public will recognize that his father does not deserve to die and that McMaster would take action to save his life.
“Understand the context of what kind of person he is and if this sort of sentence is really justified given what happened and the upbringing and history that led him to that situation,” according to Lyndall. “Really understanding that he’s just a guy who struggled with addiction but he’s not a monster; no, he’s not a bad person.”
Moore had previously opted to be executed by firing squad in 2022, when South Carolina passed legislation allowing death row prisoners the option, according to the Associated Press.
