COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) – The attorneys for South Carolina inmate Richard Moore, who is scheduled to be executed on Friday, filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution.
Moore is the second inmate to be executed in South Carolina after a 13-year pause.
His attorneys argue Moore shot and killed a store clerk in Spartanburg County in 1999 in self-defense, as he walked into the store unarmed. They also argue that racial resentment against Moore, a Black man, played a role in the all-white jury’s decision.
His attorneys point to the fact that two qualified Black jurors were removed during jury selection.
In the filing to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, Moore‘s attorneys point to the state supreme court’s “well-documented reluctance” to address Black jurors being removed.
The filing says during jury selection, white jurors were asked five questions on average, where the two Black jurors the state struck down were asked 40 and 17 questions.
Moore’s attorneys point out that the state supreme court has not found that a prosecutor “exercised his peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory manner in 32 years.”
“The totality of these circumstances supports a finding that racial discrimination played a constitutionally impermissible role in jury selection at Moore’s trial under this Court’s precedents,” his attorneys argued.
Moore has chosen to die by lethal injection on Nov. 1, 2024.
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Attorneys for SC inmate on death row file motion to US Supreme Court to stop his execution
