After holiday pause, South Carolina begins scheduling executions again

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Supreme Court has set a Jan. 31 date for the state next execution after taking a break for the Christmas holidays.

The state is working through a backlog of inmates who have not appealed but are temporarily spared because prison officials were unable to obtain drugs needed for lethal injections.

Marion Bowman Jr., 44, was convicted of murder in the shooting death 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 carried out by lethal injection since September, after the state obtained the drug needed to carry out the death sentence. Detainees can also choose electrocution or a new firing squad. Three more inmates are awaiting execution dates that the Supreme Court has ruled could be five weeks apart.

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

“Six consecutive executions with virtually no reprieve will take a significant toll on everyone involved, especially at a time of year that is so important for families,” the attorneys wrote in court filings.

Attorneys for the state had responded that prison officials were willing to stick to the original schedule and that the state had previously carried out executions around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, including five between Dec. 4, 1998, and Jan. 8, 1999.

South Carolina was one of the busiest states for executions at the time, but that stopped when the state began having trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs due to drug companies’ concerns that they would have to reveal they had sold the drugs to officials.

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

Freddie Owens was put to death by lethal injection on September 20 and Richard Moore was executed on November 1

Convicted prisoners can also ask South Carolina’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, for clemency, but no governor in the state has ever taken mercy and reduced a death sentence to life without parole in the modern era of capital punishment.

South Carolina’s prison 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 was the last person executed by firing squad in the U.S. in 2010, 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.

A friend said Bowman was angry because Martin owed him money. A second witness claimed Bowman believed Martin was wearing a recording device to get him arrested on charges.

A federal judge threw out the case earlier this year a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union requesting that a podcast by Bowman be broadcast as part of his clemency petition. The organization has appealed the decision.

The South Carolina prison system prohibits personal interviews of inmates on camera or recording their phone conversations or words for broadcast.

Bowman’s attorneys have asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to delay his execution so a hearing can take place his last desperate call He said his trial attorney was underprepared 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 does not have effective legal representation.

Bowman’s attorney pressured him to plead guilty and “made other bad decisions based on his racist views instead of strategic legal advisors,” said Lindsey S. Vann, executive director of the 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 a reduced sentence in exchange for their cooperation,” Vann said.

South Carolina has put 45 prisoners to death since the US renewed the death penalty in 1976. In the early 2000s, an average of three executions were carried out per year. Nine states have put more prisoners to death.

But since the accidental execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has declined. At the beginning of 2011, the state had 63 convicted prisoners. Currently there are 30. About 20 prisoners have been arrested. taken off death row and received several prison sentences after successful appeals. Others died of natural causes.