
Interview of William Neal Moore
William Neal Moore spent more than sixteen years on Georgia's death row after pleading guilty to a 1974 murder committed during a burglary. In this interview for Stephen Bright's Yale course on capital punishment, Moore describes eight scheduled execution dates, including one in 1984 when a stay arrived just seven hours before he was to die. He talks about the lawyers who represented him, the routines and relationships of death row, and the experience of watching fellow inmates executed one at a time while awaiting his own turn. Moore recounts seeking forgiveness from his victim's family and building a relationship with them, a process that contributed to his sentence being commuted to life in 1990. He was paroled the following year and speaks about his life since release. Bright, who teaches the course, guides the conversation but leaves most of the account in Moore's own words, giving a firsthand view of what death row confinement and near-execution actually involve.