South Carolina is starting to schedule foreclosures again after a holiday break, and the state Supreme Court has scheduled the next one for Jan. 31.
The state wants to carry out the death sentences of several inmates who were left without appeals, but their executions have been delayed because prison officials have been unable to obtain lethal drug injections.
Marion Bowman Jr., 44, is scheduled to be sentenced to death at the end of January for his murder conviction in the 2001 shooting death of a friend whose burned body was found in the trunk of her car in Dorchester County.
Bowman’s attorneys said Friday that he maintains his innocence. His lawyers also argue that his dying would be “unconscionable” because of the unresolved doubts about his conviction.
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Marion Bowman Jr., 44, is scheduled to be killed on January 31. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
He would be the third inmate executed since September after the state procured lethal injections of the drug. The first two – Freddie Owens, who was executed on September 20, and Richard Moore, who was executed on November 1 – chose death by lethal injection, but inmates can also choose electrocution or a new firing squad.
Three more prisoners are awaiting execution dates. The state supreme court ruled that executions could be scheduled five weeks apart.
The court could have set Bowman’s execution date as early as Dec. 6, but the court accepted without comment a request by lawyers for the four death row inmates to delay the executions until January.
“Six consecutive executions with almost no respite will take a significant toll on everyone involved, especially during a time of year that is so important to families,” the lawyers wrote in court documents.
Attorneys representing the state responded that prison officials were willing to keep 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 Jan. 8, 1999.
Once one of the states with the highest traffic in executions, South Carolina had a 13-year hiatus on executions before resuming last fall because of problems with the supply of lethal injection drugs after supplies ran out due to drug companies’ concerns that they would have to disclose that they had been selling the drug. civil servants. But the state legislature passed a protection law two years ago that allows officials to keep suppliers of the deadly drugs private.
In July, the state Supreme Court cleared the way for the executions to continue.
Death row inmates can also seek clemency from Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, but no governor in the state has ever commuted a death sentence to life in prison without parole in the modern capital punishment era.
This photo shows the state death chamber in Columbia, South Carolina, including the electric chair, right, and the firing squad chair, left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
South Carolina’s prison director has until next week to confirm that lethal injection, the electric chair and the newly added firing squad option are available options for Bowman.
The last time a US inmate was executed by firing squad 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 a plea deal they reached with prosecutors.
One friend said Bowman was upset because Martin owed him money, while another testified that Bowman believed Martin was carrying a recording device to arrest him.
Bowman’s lawyers asked the state Supreme Court to stay his execution to allow his latest appeal to be heard, arguing that his lawyer was unprepared and sympathized too much with the white victim rather than his black client.
His current lawyers said Friday that he did not have a fair trial and lacked effective legal representation.
Bowman’s trial attorney forced him to admit guilt and “made other bad decisions based on his racist views rather than strategic legal advice,” according to Lindsey S. Vann, executive director of the prisoner advocacy group Justice 360.
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The room where prisoners are executed in Columbus, South Carolina. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
“His conviction was based on the unreliable, inflammatory testimony of biased witnesses who received reduced or expunged sentences in exchange for cooperation,” wrote Vann, who released a statement on behalf of Bowman’s legal team.
South Carolina has executed 45 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976. In the early 2000s, the state carried out an average of three executions per year. Only nine states killed more prisoners.
Since an inadvertent moratorium on executions that began in 2011, the nation’s death row population has shrunk significantly.
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The state had 63 inmates on death row in early 2011, but now has only 30. About 20 inmates were removed from death row and received different sentences after successful appeals, while others died of natural causes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
