Columbia, SC – South Carolina is preparing to execute the third inmate that has been killed since September, since the State goes through an accumulation of prisoners who exhausted their appeals, while the State could not find lethal injective drugs.
The execution of Marion Bowman Jr. is scheduled for the 6 PM on Friday in a Columbia prison. Bowman, 44, was convicted of murder for the death of a friend whose burned body was found in the trunk of a car.
Bowman has maintained his innocence since his arrest. His lawyers said he was convicted of the word of several friends and family who received agreements or that the prosecutors had withdrawn the positions in exchange for their testimony.
Bowman, who has been in the death corridor more than half of his life, was offered a guilt agreement for a life imprisonment, but went to trial because he said he was not guilty.
The execution of Friday will continue to the state raising a 13 -year -old pause caused in part because state officials could not obtain lethal injected medications. The General Assembly approved a shield law and prison officials were able to find a composite pharmacy willing to do the pentobarbital if their identity was not made public.
Bowman doesn’t ask Governor Henry McMaster Clemency. His lawyer, Lindsey Vann, said Bowman did not want to spend more decades in prison for a crime he did not commit.
“After more than two decades of fighting a broken system that has failed at every step, Marion’s decision is a powerful negative to legitimize an unfair process that has already stolen much of his life,” Vann said in a statement Thursday.
No governor in the 45 previous executions in South Carolina since the capital punishment was restored in 1976 has given mercy and has reduced a death sentence to life imprisonment without probation.
Bowman was convicted in Dorchester County in 2002 for murder in the murder of Kandee Martin, 21, in 2001. Several friends and family testified against him as part of the guilt agreements.
A friend said Bowman was angry because Martin owed him money. Bowman’s second testimony thought Martin had a recording device to arrest him.
Bowman said she sold drugs to Martin, who was her friend for years and that she sometimes paid with sex, but he denied having killed her.
Bowman is black as the other two inmates executed since the pause ended. The final appeal of his lawyers said his litigating lawyer had too much sympathy for his white victim. The Supreme Court of South Carolina called the argument without merit.
Another concern raised by Bowman’s lawyers is their weight. An anesthesiologist said that he fears that the lethal injection protocols of South Carolina do not take into account that Bowman appears as 389 pounds (176 kilograms) in the prison records. It may be difficult to obtain an IV properly in a blood vessel and determine the dose of the necessary drugs in people with obesity.
Prison officials used two doses of pentobarbital administered 11 minutes apart in the previous execution, according to the autopsy records.
Before the 13 -year -old pause, South Carolina was among the busiest states for executions. A shield law approved last year allowed the Pentobarbital supplier to kill inmates to keep themselves secret and prison officials were able to find a composite pharmacy willing to sell the drug.
The Supreme Court of the State cleared the way to restart executions in July. Freddie Owens was executed by lethal injection on September 20 and Richard Moore was executed on November 1.
The court will allow an execution every five weeks until the other three inmates who have run out of appeals are executed.
South Carolina has killed 45 inmates since the death penalty was restarted in the United States in 1976. In the early 2000s, she carried out an average of three executions per year. Nine states have died more inmates.
But from the involuntary execution pause, the population of sliding of the death of South Carolina has decreased. The State had 63 inmates convicted in early 2011. It currently has 30. Some 20 inmates have been taken from the death corridor and received different prison sentences after successful appeals. Others have died for natural causes.
