South Carolina Supreme Court engages in notable debate over how it engages in capital proportionality review

This local article from South Carolina, headlined "‘Our system is broken.’ SC Supreme Court justice assails death sentence in Upstate case," reports on an interesting ruling from the top court in the Palmetto State. Here are the basics and the context from the press piece:

An associate justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court issued a rare and blunt dissent Wednesday in an Upstate death penalty case about a 1999 convenience store robbery that four of the five justices agreed to uphold.

“In the nearly 13 years I have served on this Court, I have voted to affirm eleven death sentences on direct appeal and have never dissented,” Associate Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in her 14-page dissent. But the spur-of-the moment killing committed by Richard Moore in 1999 during a convenience store robbery in Spartanburg County is so different from the usual brutal premeditated slayings for which South Carolina juries give out the death penalty that condemning Moore to death is disproportional, or so far out of line, as not to be lawful, Hearn wrote.

“The death penalty should be reserved for those who commit the most heinous crimes in our society, and I do not believe Moore’s crimes rise to that level,” Hearn wrote, calling South Carolina’s system “broken.”

In Wednesday’s majority opinion, four Supreme Court justices upheld Moore’s death sentence in a case that centered on the issue of whether the sentence was proportional, or roughly the same as, other death sentences for similar crimes. The majority, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Donald Beatty, wrote that Moore’s crime had the aggravating factors set out in the law — such as killing during an armed robbery — that qualified a person for the death penalty, Moore, now 57, has been on South Carolina’s death row 21 years.

The full ruling in Moore v. Stirling, Opinion No. 28088 (S.C. April 6, 2022), is available at this link.  Here is how the majority opinion starts:

Richard Bernard Moore ("Moore") filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the proportionality of the death sentence that was imposed for his murder conviction. The Court ordered briefing and granted Moore's motion to argue against the precedent of State v. Copeland, 278 S.C. 572, 300 S.E.2d 63 (1982).  In Copeland, the Court discussed the requirement in S.C. Code Ann. § 16-3-25(C)(3) (2015) that this Court undertake a comparative proportionality review of "similar cases" in death penalty matters.  After review of the record and applicable law and consideration of the parties' arguments, we clarify Copeland and note the Court is not statutorily required to restrict its proportionality review of "similar cases" to a comparison of only cases in which a sentence of death was imposed.  We conclude, however, that Moore has not established that he is entitled to habeas relief.

And here is how the dissent begins:

This Court has never found a single death sentence disproportionate dating back to 1977, the first time comparative proportionality review was required by the General Assembly. This includes the forty-three individuals who have been executed by the State of South Carolina during this modern era of capital punishment, and all of the thirty-five inmates currently housed on death row who have exhausted their direct appeal.  The State characterizes these statistics — currently, approximately zero for seventy-seven — as proof that our capital sentencing scheme functions as it should.  I write separately to express my view that our system is broken and to disagree with that part of the majority opinion which finds Petitioner Richard Moore's sentence proportionate to his crime.