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South Carolina is beginning to schedule executions again after a holiday pause, and the state Supreme Court has set the next one for Jan. 31.
The state is seeking to carry out death sentences for several inmates who cannot appeal but whose executions were delayed because prison officials could not obtain lethal injection drugs.
Marion Bowman Jr., 44, will be executed in late January for his murder conviction for shooting a friend whose burned body was found in the trunk of her car in Dorchester County in 2001.
Bowman’s attorneys said Friday that he maintains his innocence. His lawyers also argue that executing him would be “unconscionable” because of unresolved questions about his conviction.
SOUTH CAROLINA INMATE DIES BY LETHAL INJECTION, ENDING 13-YEAR PAUSE IN STATE EXECUTIONS
Marion Bowman Jr., 44, will be executed on January 31. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
He would be the third inmate executed since September after the state obtained lethal injection drugs. The first two – Freddie Owens, executed on September 20, and Richard Moore, executed on November 1 – chose to die by lethal injection, but inmates can also choose electrocution or a new firing squad.
Three more inmates are awaiting their execution date. He state supreme court ruled that executions can be scheduled five weeks apart.
The court could have set Bowman’s execution date as early as Dec. 6, but granted without comment a request by attorneys for the four death row inmates to delay the executions until January.
“Six consecutive executions with virtually no respite will take a considerable toll on all involved, particularly during a time of year that is so important to families,” the attorneys wrote in court papers.
Lawyers representing the state responded that corrections officials were prepared to stick with the original schedule and that the state had carried out executions around Christmas and New Year’s in the past, including five between Dec. 4, 1998, and Dec. 8. January 1999.
South Carolina, once one of the top execution states, had a 13-year pause in executions before resuming them last fall due to problems obtaining lethal injection drugs after its supply expired due to concerns of the pharmaceutical companies that they would have to reveal that they had sold the drugs to state officials. But the state legislature two years ago passed a protective law that allows officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers private.
In July, the state Supreme Court cleared the way for executions to resume.
Death row inmates can also ask Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, for clemency, but no state governor has ever reduced a death sentence to life in prison without parole in the modern death penalty era.
This photo shows the state death chamber in Columbia, South Carolina, including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
South Carolina’s corrections director has until next week to confirm that lethal injection, the electric chair and the new option of a firing squad are options available to Bowman.
The last time an inmate was executed by firing squad in the United States was in Utah in 2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Bowman was convicted of killing Kandee Martin, 21, in 2001. Several friends and family members testified against him as part of plea deals they reached with prosecutors.
One friend said Bowman was upset because Martin owed him money, while a second testified that Bowman believed Martin was carrying a recording device to arrest him.
Bowman’s lawyers asked the state Supreme Court to delay his execution to allow a hearing on his last-minute appeal, arguing that his trial lawyer was unprepared and had too much sympathy for the white victim and not his black client.
His current lawyers said Friday that he did not receive a fair trial and lacked effective legal representation.
Bowman’s trial attorney pressured him to plead guilty and “made other bad decisions based on his racist views rather than strategic legal advice,” according to Lindsey S. Vann, executive director of the inmate advocacy group Justice 360.
The room where prisoners are executed in Columbus, South Carolina. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
“His conviction was based on unreliable and incentivized testimony from biased witnesses who received reduced or vacated sentences in exchange for their cooperation,” wrote Vann, who issued the statement on behalf of Bowman’s legal team.
South Carolina has executed 45 inmates since the death penalty was resumed in the United States in 1976. In the early 2000s, the state carried out an average of three executions per year. Only nine states have killed more inmates.
Since the involuntary pause on executions that began in 2011, the state’s death row population has dropped significantly.
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The state had 63 death row inmates in early 2011, but now has only 30. About 20 inmates have been removed from death row and received different sentences after successful appeals, while others have died of natural causes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
