South Carolina executed 59-year-old Richard Mohr by lethal injection yesterday for the fatal shooting of a shop assistant despite mass appeals for mercy by three jurors and the trial judge, a former prison director, pastors and his family, the Associated Press reported, quoted by BTA.
Moore was charged with murdering a Spartanburg convenience store clerk in September 1999 and sentenced to death two years later. He entered the store unarmed, took a gun from the victim when the weapon was pointed at him, and fatally shot him in the chest while the clerk wounded him in the arm with another gun.
Mohr's attorneys asked South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, to commute his sentence to life in prison without parole because of his clean prison record and willingness to mentor other inmates.
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They also stated that it would be unfair to execute a man for what could be considered self-defense, and it was also unfair that More, a black man, should be the only prisoner sentenced to death by a jury where there was neither an African American.
However, McMaster refused to pardon him. No South Carolina governor has ever revoked a death sentence, and since the US Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions nearly 50 years ago, there have been 45 executions in the country.