After holiday pause, South Carolina begins scheduling executions again
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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.
