South Carolina plans to resume executions after recess for the holidays

South Carolina The state Supreme Court is starting to schedule executions again after a recess for the holiday, with the next execution set for January 31.

The state is seeking executions for several inmates who have no appeals but whose executions have been delayed because prison officials have been unable to obtain lethal injection drugs.

Marion Bowman Jr., 44, is set to be executed in late January for the 2001 shooting death of his friend, whose body was found burned in the trunk of his car in Dorchester County.

Bowman’s attorneys said Friday that he maintains his innocence. His lawyers also argue that it would be “unconscionable” to sentence him to death because of unresolved doubts about his conviction.

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Marion Bowman Jr., 44, is scheduled to be executed on January 31. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

He will be the third inmate executed since September after the state bought lethal injection drugs. The first two – Freddie Owens, who was executed on September 20, and Richard Moore, who was executed on November 1 – chose to die by lethal injection, but inmates can also choose electrocution or a new firing squad.

Three more prisoners are awaiting execution date. The state Supreme Court decided that the executions could be suspended for five weeks.

The court could have set Bowman’s execution date for Dec. 6, but the court accepted without comment a request by lawyers for the four death row inmates to postpone the executions until January.

“Six consecutive executions with virtually no reprieve would cause significant harm to all involved, especially at a time of year that is so important to families,” the attorneys wrote in court filings.

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

South Carolina, once one of the busiest states for executions, took a 13-year hiatus on executions before resuming this fall because pharmaceutical companies struggled to obtain lethal injection drugs after their supply ran out. sold drugs to government officials. But the state legislature passed a shield law two years ago that allows officials to keep secret suppliers of lethal injection drugs.

In July, the state Supreme Court cleared the way to reinstate executions.

Inmates on death row can also seek clemency from Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, but no governor in the state has commuted a sentence to life without parole in the modern era of the death penalty.

This photo also includes the state’s death chamber in Columbia, South Carolina, with the electric chair on the right and the firing squad chair on the left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

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

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the last time an inmate was executed in the United States was in 2010 in Utah.

Bowman was convicted in 2001 of killing 21-year-old Kandi Martin. Several friends and family members testified against him as part of plea deals with prosecutors.

One friend said Bowman was upset that Martin owed him money, and another said Bowman believed Martin had planted a recording device to arrest him.

Bowman’s attorneys asked the state Supreme Court to delay his execution to allow a last-ditch appeal hearing, arguing that his trial attorney was unprepared and too sympathetic to the white victim rather than his black client.

His current lawyers said Friday that he did not receive a fair trial and did not have effective legal representation.

Bowman’s trial attorney pressed him admit your guilt According to Lindsey S. Vann, executive director of the prisoner advocacy group Justice 360, he “made other bad decisions based on his racist views rather than strategic legal counsel.”

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An execution chamber in Columbus, South Carolina. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

“His conviction was based on the unreliable, motivated testimony of biased witnesses whose sentences were reduced or dismissed in exchange for cooperation,” Vann wrote in a statement on behalf of Bowman’s legal team.

In 1976, after the death penalty was reinstated in the United States, 45 prisoners were executed in South Carolina. In the early 2000s, the state averaged three executions per year. Only nine states have executed more inmates.

Since a moratorium on executions beginning in 2011, the state’s death row population has declined significantly.

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At the beginning of 2011, there were 63 inmates on death row in the state, but now there are only 30. About 20 prisoners have been removed from death row and received various sentences after successful appeals, while others have died of natural causes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.