Murder victim’s niece weighs in after Supreme Court sides with death row inmate

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Photo: HOGP

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Bobby Moore, who averaged an IQ score of 70.66.

Photo: HOGP

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Bobby James Moore is on death row for the shooting death of James McCarble during a grocery store robbery on April 25, 1980.

Photo: Texas Department Of Criminal Justice

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Willie Albert Koonce got a life sentence for a 1980 robbery and slaying at a Houston store. He was a co-defendant of Bobby Moore, who got the death penalty and whose case went before the U.S. Supreme Court. Koonce was released in 2012 on parole. less

Photo: Texas Department Of Criminal Justice

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Everett Anthony Pradia, was convicted for his role in a 1980 robbery that resulted in a clerk being shot to death. Pradia was a co-defendant of Bobby Moore, whose case goes went the U.S. Supreme Court. Pradia pleaded guilty in the case and got 45 years for four counts of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. He was released in 1997. less

Photo: TDCJ

The niece of a 1980 murder victim said Thursday that she is “accepting the inevitable” two days after the Supreme Court ruled that Texas courts must reconsider whether death row inmate Bobby Moore is intellectually disabled and thus exempt from execution.

On April 25, 1980, Moore fatally shot elderly store clerk James McCarble during a robbery at Houston’s Birdsall Super Market, not far from Memorial Park. He told police he and his two accomplices picked the store because two elderly people were running the customer service booth, and the cashier was pregnant.

McCarble’s niece Marti Jones was 30 at the time. She and other relatives pushed for the death penalty for decades.

“He went to the trouble of killing my uncle,” said Jones, now 67. “He leaned over and looked at my uncle … and shot him. He could’ve taken the money that he already had and run.”

Family members joined the prison’s mailing list to follow the case, Jones said. The past 37 years of litigation included at least two execution dates, one stayed just 10 hours in advance.

After the Supreme Court’s intervention this week, Jones said she thinks her family is “accepting the inevitable”: Moore likely will never be executed.

“I’m OK with him not dying. I don’t care, I really don’t care,” Jones said. “After this long in prison, hopefully he’s learned his lesson.”

Jones recalled that her uncle took her to church as a child. More than 15 years ago, she told the Chronicle about McCarble, who worked 35 years at the Birdsall Super Market.

“He was a very giving man, a religious man,” Jones said in 2001 after Moore received his second death sentence. “He often paid for people’s groceries when they couldn’t afford them.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling struck down the test that Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals developed to help determine whether someone is intellectually disabled, sending Moore’s case back for reconsideration.