USA. Execution of Richard Moore despite numerous appeals. “The sentence is completely disproportionate to the crime”

The execution was carried out on Friday at 6:24 p.m. local time (11:24 p.m. ET) by lethal injection, said Chrysti Shain, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

The day before Supreme Court The United States rejected the request of a 59-year-old prisoner to suspend the execution of the sentence. Moore also asked South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster for clemency, but he rejected his request on Friday, allowing the execution to go ahead as planned.

Moore, who is black, was convicted of murdering white clerk James Mahoney during a 1999 robbery of a convenience store in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Moore entered the store unarmed. When the clerk pointed a gun at him, Moore grabbed the gun out of his hand. Mahoney then grabbed a second gun and shot the robber in the arm before he fired a fatal shot at him. Moore fled, taking with him a bag filled with $1,400 in cash.

Moore's attorneys unsuccessfully asked Republican Governor Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole because of Moore's impeccable behavior in prison.

As defense lawyers argued, it would be unfair to execute someone who committed an act that could be considered self-defense. “No other death penalty case in South Carolina has involved an unarmed defendant defending himself from a victim who threatened him with a gun,” the lawyers said in a statement. They also called it unfair that Moore, a black man, was the only death row inmate convicted by a jury that did not include any African-Americans.

– It's definitely a part of my life that I would like to change because I took someone's life. I took someone's life, Moore says in the recording, released by his lawyers as part of an appeal for his clemency. More than 20 people have appealed against the execution, including two jurors, the judge from Moore's original trial, a former director of the state prison system, and several pastors.

The convict's son, Lyndall Moore, who was four years old when his father was charged, argued that Moore deserved mercy. – This is a man who made mistakes, and this particular mistake led to the death of another man. But his sentence is completely disproportionate to the crime committed, he argued before the execution.

At a press conference Friday, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections revealed the contents of Moore's final statement, which his attorney read aloud during his execution.

“To the family of Mr. James Mahoney: I am deeply sorry for the pain and sadness I have caused you. To my children and grandchildren: I love you and I am proud of you. Thank you for the joy you have brought into my life. To all my friends and acquaintances , new and old: thank you for your love and support,” Moore wrote.

The AP noted that no South Carolina governor has commuted a death sentence since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions nearly a half-century ago. Since then, there have been 45 of them in South Carolina.