The son of a South Carolina inmate urges the governor to save his father from execution

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The son of a South Carolina inmate urges the governor to save his father from execution

2024-10-16 12:04 Last Updated At：12:21

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Richard Moore never meant to kill anyone the night he robbed a South Carolina convenience store and the Black man was convicted by a jury with no African Americans, his son and lawyers say as they fight to save the inmate from execution next month.

Moore went unarmed into a Spartanburg County store to rob it in 1999, took a gun from a clerk when it was pointed at him and fatally shot the clerk in the chest as the two struggled.

The inmate's son, Lyndall Moore, said his father is now the only prisoner left on the state's death row convicted by a jury without any Black people.

“He's a human being who made mistakes,” Moore added. “And this particular mistake led to the death of another human being. But his sentence is completely disproportionate to the actual crime.”

South Carolina ended a 13-year pause on executions last month with the lethal injection of Freddie Owens. Moore is set to be executed Nov. 1.

Moore's lawyers have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution, saying a lower court should review whether it was fair that no African Americans were on the jury that considered Moore's fate in Spartanburg County, which was 20% Black in the 2000 U.S. Census.

They also hope Moore will become the first South Carolina inmate whose death sentence is commuted to life without parole since executions in the U.S. resumed in 1976.

Only South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster can grant clemency. A former prosecutor, McMaster didn't grant it for Owens and has said previously that he tends to trust juries and the court system.

But Moore's family and lawyers contend executing Moore is too harsh a punishment. In a state where the governor and prison director have made a priority of getting inmates to turn their lives around, Moore's spotless record behind bars and his reputation for helping other inmates merits a reprieve, they say.

“He’s very remorseful and sorry for the horrible, tragic decisions he made in his life. But he spent the past 20 years really trying to make up for that by loving the people he still has in his life," attorney Lindsey Vann said.

Moore killed clerk James Mahoney, 40, a man with some disabilities who loved his family and tried to take care of co-workers.

The prosecutors in Moore's case included Trey Gowdy, a Republican who later served four terms in Congress, and Barry Barnette, currently the solicitor in Spartanburg County. Both have declined comment, with Gowdy saying the 1999 trial speaks for itself.

In asking the jury to sentence Moore to death, Gowdy reminded them of Moore's criminal record for stealing and robbing to gain drug money.

He focused on how after shooting Mahoney, Moore — also shot in the arm in the struggle — walked over the dying clerk's body looking for cash.

“The hopes and the goals and the dreams of a 40-year-old man are coming out of his heart, and the cold, wet drops of blood of a career criminal are dripping on his back,” Gowdy said. “There is a time for mercy, ladies and gentlemen. That time has come and gone.”

Moore's supporters said the trial represents plenty that is wrong about the death penalty in South Carolina, how arbitrary it is because prosecutors can make political points by bringing a number of death penalty cases when the cases don't represent the worst of unrepentant, cruel and heinous criminals.

And then there is the problem of a jury without Black representation, Vann said.

“I’m really struck by the image that I’ve had of Richard’s trial where there’s a white prosecutor, white judge, white defense attorneys, an all-white jury and he’s the only person in the room who is African American and he’s being judged by a jury who has no one who looks like him," Vann said.

Moore has had two prior execution dates, both postponed at a time when the state only had the electric chair and a firing squad. Since then, lethal injection has been added as an option, aided by passage of a law allowing suppliers of lethal injection drugs to remain secret.

Lyndall Moore said the more people get to know his father, the more they realize what a tragedy it would be to take an awful thing Richard Moore did in killing a man and make it worse by taking someone who turned their life around and tried to give something back.

He said he hopes McMaster would take the time to really get to know his father, not just glance at a file on his desk.

“He's not some menacing figure. He’s just a regular dude. ... He’s had a lot of time to think about, to reflect on what's gotten him to this point. He’s very clearly, very obviously regretful of everything,” Lyndall Moore said.

Richard Moore told The Post and Courier of Charleston in 2022 that his lawyers advised him not to reach out to Mahoney's family, but if he did, he would let them know he is "truly, truly sorry that he died at the hands of my actions.”

“I am not the same person I was the night I took Mr. Mahoney’s life. I have grown. I feel as though I still have a story to tell," Moore said.

A 9-year-old is among 5 killed in the Christmas market attack in Germany

2024-12-21 23:42 Last Updated At：23:50

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — A 9-year-old was among the five people killed in the Christmas market attack in the German city of Magdeburg, an official said Saturday.

City official Ronni Krug said he didn’t have further information on the adults who were killed. He said there were a total of 205 victims, including the five dead. He said that 41 people were seriously or very seriously injured.

Prosecutor Horst Nopens said the suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor, is under investigation on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm. He is currently being questioned.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and wounding at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The state governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose to five from a previous figure of two and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

“There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Scholz said. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

Neurosurgeon Mahmoud Elenbaby said some 80 patients were brought to Magdeburg’s university hospital on Friday night.

“We managed to stabilize most of them, but many are still in intensive care, and some are also in critical condition,” Elenbaby told The Associated Press as he dashed into the hospital cafeteria to buy himself a cola.

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what motivated the man to drive his black BMW into a crowd in the eastern German city.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Moulson reported from Berlin and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.