As the hours tick down until Richard Moore’s scheduled execution by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Friday, few options remain for him avoid the state’s death chamber.

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stay his execution to examine whether potential Black jurors were wrongly prevented from serving on his jury.

Now his hopes may rest solely on an unprecedented plea for clemency, bearing over 50,000 signatures and letters from two of the jurors who convicted him, the judge who sentenced him to death, and the former corrections department director who watched over him on death row.

“I would support the decision to commute Mr. Moore’s death sentence to life without the possibility of parole based on the work he has done to rehabilitate himself while incarcerated. I believe that commuting his death sentence and re-sentencing him to life without parole would be appropriate,” wrote one juror who sentenced Moore to die.

“I heard about Richard’s rehabilitation and would support a life sentence,” wrote another juror in a handwritten letter.

The clemency petition, delivered to Gov. Henry McMaster, paints a portrait of a very different man than the one who walked into Nikki’s Speed Mart 25 years ago and, during a robbery gone bad, shot and killed store clerk James Mahoney.

In 1999, Moore’s life was in a long, downward spiral. He had been addicted to crack cocaine for many years and had just lost his job. He had several charges for assaults and robberies in South Carolina and his native Michigan.

Since his conviction, Moore has become a devout Christian, an avid reader, taken up art and dedicated himself to mentoring and serving as a positive role model to other inmates, according to several of the letters.

He is a “reliable, consistent force for good, on death row,” wrote former S.C. Department of Corrections Director Jon Ozmint. “Commutation would have a positive influence on hundreds of offenders who would be impacted by Richard’s story of redemption and his positive example.”

“Perhaps the most compelling reason to commute Richard’s sentence is precisely because he is at peace with whatever decision you reach,” Ozmint wrote.

One of eight children, Moore was the only of his siblings to graduate high school, wrote Janis Whitlock, an expert in developmental psychology who interviewed Moore in 2015 at his lawyers’ request and ended up forming a close friendship with him.

In prison, Moore began exploring his artistic talents, including drawing, watercolors and painting, Whitlock wrote.

“Not a single conversation goes by in which my husband or I do not come away uplifted and amazed by his deep reservoir of insight, kindness and downright goodness,” said Whitlock.

In his letter for clemency, Moore’s son Lyndall called Mahoney’s death an “atrocity,” but described his father as loving, involved and committed to redeeming himself and others.

“My father spends every day of his life trying to be better than he was as a young man,” Lyndall wrote. “He wants his children to be better than him. He does not make excuses for his actions — his only interest is in staying alive so that he can serve as an example to those most at risk of going down a similar path, and so that he can play as much of a role as possible in the lives of his family.”

Others have pointed to circumstances in Moore’s case that made him an unusual candidate for the death penalty.

Moore did not carry a gun into the store the night of the murder. Instead it was Mahoney who drew a gun on Moore, who wrenched the gun out of Mahoney’s hand, leading Mahoney to draw another gun.

The two men opened fire on each other at nearly point blank range. Moore was shot in the arm, Mahoney was shot fatally in the heart.

“Over the years, I have studied the case of each person who resides on death row in South Carolina. Richard Bernard Moore’s case is unique,” former Circuit Court Judge Gary Clary, who oversaw Moore’s case and sentenced him to death, wrote in a letter to McMaster, adding “after years of thought and reflection, I humbly ask that you grant executive clemency to Mr. Moore as an act of grace and mercy.”

What are Moore’s chances of clemency?

The decision to grant clemency in Moore’s case rests solely with McMaster. But whether McMaster, the former U.S. Attorney for South Carolina and former state attorney general, will grant clemency is unknown.

Asked Wednesday whether he believed Moore was worthy of clemency, McMaster replied, “Clemency is a matter of grace, a matter of mercy. There is no standard. There is no real law on it, but as I said all along, and keep saying, I intend to review everything that I can in a timely fashion and make a decision and announce it at the right time, which would be when the question is asked on that date.”

In 2022, McMaster told reporters that he was “not inclined” to grant Moore clemency, calling the death penalty a “necessary response” to Moore’s crimes.

These comments were the basis of a motion filed by Moore’s attorneys in federal court asking that the power of clemency be transferred to Lt. Gov. Pamella Evette. Moore’s lawyers said that McMaster’s stance indicated he had pre-judged Moore, effectively denying him a constitutional right to have his clemency petition heard by an unbiased decision maker.

In denying Moore’s motion, U.S. District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis wrote she was “confident” that McMaster would give the issue “full, thoughtful, and careful consideration.”

What other options does Moore have?

Moore’s request for stay of execution before the U.S. Supreme Court was denied Thursday afternoon, leaving him with few if any legal options. The motion, which was unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court, had asked the the justices to halt the execution to consider whether Black jurors were improperly prevented from serving on the jury.

In doing so, Moore’s attorneys said, prosecutors violated rules set down after a Supreme Court case Batson v. Kentucky, which says that potential jurors cannot be prevented from serving because of their race.

Proving a so-called Batson violation is a “tough road to hoe,” said Stephen Bright, an attorney and professor at the Yale Law School who has argued one of the few successful Batson cases. The standard, while “not an absolute and complete failure” at stopping racial bias on juries, is “pretty close,” Bright told The State.

In one case, Moore’s attorneys say prosecutors struck a potential Black juror because they say she had failed to disclose an aspect of her criminal record. But so had six other potential white jurors, one of whom who was seated as an alternate, according to trial records.

In the other potential Black juror’s case, one reason that prosecutors gave for striking him was that his son had been prosecuted for murder. But three other white jurors with relatives who had been prosecuted were not struck by the prosecution and ended up on the jury.

Among them was the jury foreperson whose brother had been prosecuted for drug possession and another juror whose mother had been prosecuted for murder.

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