William Neal Moore

William Neal Moore is an ordained minister at the church, which is sandwiched between two housing projects in the racially mixed community. He is a doting father, a devoted husband, a faithful provider, a hard working employee, a man of compassion and prayer who spends his spare time helping hurting people who everyone else seems to have forgotten. In short, a model citizen.

But turn back the calendar to May 1984. At the time, Moore was locked in the death watch cell at the Georgia State Penitentiary, down the hallway from the electric chair where his life was scheduled to be snuffed out in less than 72 hours.

This was not the case of an innocent man being rail roaded by the justice system. Unquestionably, Moore was a murderer. He had admitted as much. After a childhood of poverty and occasional petty crimes, he had joined the Army and later became depressed by marital and financial woes. One night he got drunk and broke into the house of a 77 year old Fredger Stapleton, who was known to keep large amounts of cash in his bedroom.

From behind a door, Stapleton let loose a with a shot gun blast, and Moore fired back with a pistol. Stapleton was killed instantly, and within minutes Moore was fleeing with $5,600. An informant tipped police and the next morning he was arrested at his trailer outside of town. Caught with the proceeds from the crime, Moore admitted his guilt and was sentenced to death, he had squandered his life and turned to violence, and now he himself would face a violent end.

But the William Neal Moore who was counting down the hours to his scheduled execution was not the same person who had murdered Fredger Stpleton. Shortly after being imprisoned, two church leaders visited Moore at the behest of his mother. They told him about the mercy and hope that was available through Jesus Christ.

“Nobody had ever told me that Jesus loves me and died for me”. Moore explained during my visit to Georgia. “It was a love I could feel. It was a love I wanted. It was a love I needed’

One that day, Moore said yes to Christ’s free gift of forgiveness and eternal life, and he as promptly baptised in a small tub that was used by prison trusties. And he would never be the same.

For sixteen years on Death Row, Moore was like a missionary among the other inmates. He led Bible studies and conducted prayer sessions. He counselled prisoners and introduced many of them to faith in Jesus Christ. Some churches actually sent people to Death Row to be counselled by him. He took dozens of Bible courses by correspondence. He won the forgiveness of his victim’s family. He became known as ‘The Peacemaker’ because his cell block, largely populated by inmates who had become Christians through his influence, was always the safest, the quietest, and the most orderly.

Meanwhile, Moore inched closer and closer to execution. Legally speaking his case was a hopeless cause. Since he had pleaded guilty there were virtually no legal issues that might win his release on appeal. Time after time, the courts reaffirmed his death sentence.

So profound was the depth of Moore’s transformation, however, that people began to take notice. Many people started campaigning to save his life. “Billy’s not what he was then” said a former inmate who had met Moore in prison. “If you kill him today, you’re killing a body, but a body with a different mind. It would be like executing the wrong man”

Praising him for not only being rehabilitated but also being an “agent of the rehabilitation of others” an editorial in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution declared: “In the eyes of many, he is a saintly figure”.

Just hours prior to Moore’s being strapped into the electric chair, shortly before Moore’s head and right calf would be shaved so that the lethal electrodes could be attached, the courts surprised nearly everyone by issuing a temporary halt to his execution.

Even more amazingly, Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole later voted unanimously to spare his life by commuting his sentence to life in prison. But what was really astounding‐ in fact, unprecedented in modern Georgia history was when the Parole and Pardon Board decided that Moore, an admitted and once‐condemned armed robber and murderer, should go free.

On November 8, 1991, he was released.

When asked about the source of his amazing metamorphosis he shook his head when he was told was the prison rehabilitation system and a self help program which did it.

‘Who was responsible for his transformation?’ some one asked him. “Plain and simple, it was Jesus Christ’ he declared adamantly. ‘He changed me in ways I could never have changed on my own. He gave me a reason to live.

He helped me do the right thing. He gave me a heart for others. He saves my soul.”

That’s the power of faith to change a human life. “Therefore,” wrote the apostle Paul, “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.”

Billy Moore the Christian is not the same as Billy Moore the killer. God had intervened with his forgiveness, with his mercy, with his power, with the abiding presence of his Spirit. That same kind of transforming grace is available to everyone who acts on the ample evidence for Jesus Christ by making the decision to turn away from their sin and embrace him as their forgiver, Lord and Saviour.

It’s waiting all those who say yes to God and his ways.