After holiday pause, South Carolina begins scheduling executions again

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s Supreme Court set a Jan. 31 date for the state’s next execution after allowing a pause for the Christmas holidays.

The state is working through a backlog of inmates out of appeals but temporarily spared because prison officials couldn’t obtain drugs needed for lethal injection.

Marion Bowman Jr., 44, was convicted of murder in the shooting of a friend whose burned body was found in the trunk of her car in Dorchester County in 2001.

Bowman’s legal team said Friday that he maintains his innocence, while arguing that executing him would be “unconscionable” because of unresolved doubts about his conviction.

Bowman would be the third inmate executed by lethal injection since September after the state obtained the drug it needed to carry out the death sentence. Inmates can also choose electrocution or a new firing squad. Three more inmates are awaiting execution dates that the state Supreme Court has decided can be set five weeks apart.

The court could have set a date as early as Dec. 6 for Bowman’s death, but the justices accepted without comment a request from lawyers for the four inmates awaiting execution that the state pause the deaths until January.

“Six consecutive executions with virtually no respite will take a substantial toll on all involved, particularly during a time of year that is so important to families,” the lawyers wrote in court papers.

Attorneys for the state had responded that prison officials were ready to keep to the original schedule and the state has conducted executions around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays before, including five between Dec. 4, 1998, and Jan. 8, 1999.

South Carolina was among the busiest states for executions back then, but that stopped once the state had trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs because of pharmaceutical companies’ concerns they would have to disclose they had sold the drugs to officials.

The state Legislature has since passed a law allowing officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers secret, and in July, the state Supreme Court cleared the way to restart executions.

Freddie Owens was put to death by lethal injection Sept. 20 and Richard Moore was executed on Nov. 1,

Condemned inmates can also ask South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster for clemency, but no governor in the state has ever taken mercy and reduced a death sentence to life in prison without parole in the modern era of the death penalty.

South Carolina’s prisons director has until next week to confirm that lethal injection, the electric chair and the newly added option of a firing squad are all available for Bowman’s execution.

A Utah inmate in 2010 was the last person to have been executed by a firing squad in the U.S., according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

Bowman, has spent more than half his life on death row. He was convicted of killing 21-year-old Kandee Martin in 2001. A number of friends and family members testified against him as part of plea deals.

One friend said Bowman was angry because Martin owed him money. A second testified Bowman thought Martin was wearing a recording device to get him arrested on a charge.

A federal judge earlier this year threw out a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union asking to be able to air a podcast from Bowman as part of his clemency request. The organization has appealed the decision.

South Carolina’s prison system bans on-camera, in-person interviews with inmates or recording their phone calls or words for broadcast.

Bowman’s lawyers asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to postpone his execution so a hearing can be held on his last-ditch appeal saying his trial lawyer was inadequately prepared and had too much sympathy for the white victim and not Bowman, who is Black.

Bowman’s legal team said Friday that he did not receive a fair trial and lacked effective legal representation.

Bowman’s attorney pressured him to plead guilty and “made other poor decisions based on his racist views rather than strategic legal counsel,” said Lindsey S. Vann, executive director of the inmate-advocacy group Justice 360.

Vann issued the statement on behalf of Bowman’s legal team.

“His conviction was based on unreliable, incentivized testimony from biased witnesses who received reduced or dropped sentences in exchange for their cooperation,” Vann said.

South Carolina has put 45 inmates to death since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it was carrying out an average of three executions a year. Nine states have put more inmates to death.

But since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled. The state had 63 condemned inmates in early 2011. It currently has 30. About 20 inmates have been taken off death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals. Others have died of natural causes.