Judge Rules SC Governor Should Retain Clemency Authority After Challenge By Death Row Inmate

A federal judge has ruled that South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster will retain his right to be the final judge of clemency for a death row inmate even though he once claimed to have no intention of granting it, The State reports.  “The Court is confident... Governor McMaster will give full, thoughtful, and careful consideration to any clemency petition filed by Moore, giving both comprehensive and individualized attention to the unique circumstances of his case,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis in a ruling issued Monday. The ruling is a setback for Richard Moore, who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Nov. 1, and sought to strip the power to grant clemency from McMaster. Attorneys for Moore instead asked that Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette review Moore’s clemency application. Moore, 59, was sentenced to death in 2001 for shooting and killing James Mahoney, a Spartanburg County store clerk, during an armed robbery two years prior.

In 2022, McMaster told reporters following a stay in Moore’s execution by the state Supreme Court that he did not plan to commute Moore’s sentence. “I’ve seen the record, and there have been many hearings up and down, motions, and this penalty is a very strong response to criminal activity — but it is a necessary response,” McMaster said. As a result of these statements — and McMaster’s previous post as the state’s elected attorney general, when he defend Moore’s conviction on appeal — Moore’s attorneys argued that McMaster was biased against Moore. By pre-judging Moore’s request for clemency, McMaster was violating Moore’s due process right to have his clemency petition heard by “an impartial, open-minded, and unbiased decision-maker,” his attorneys argued. But in her ruling Monday declining to issue an injunction against McMaster, Lewis wrote that she believed McMaster would give “full, thoughtful, and careful consideration to any clemency petition filed by Moore, giving both comprehensive and individualized attention to the unique circumstances of his case.”