US Supreme Court rejects likely final appeal of inmate

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Thursday what is likely the final appeal of a South Carolina inmate the day before his scheduled execution for a 2001 killing of a friend found dead in her burning car. Marion Bowman Jr.'s request to stop his execution until a court could hear more arguments over whether his trial attorney had too much sympathy for the white victim to put on a vigorous defense was turned down without comment. Bowman. 44, will be the third Black man to be executed in South Carolina in four months after the state restarted its death chamber following a 13-year pause in part because prison officials couldn't obtain lethal injection drugs. He is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Friday with a single dose of pentobarbital at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Bowman was convicted of murder in the killing of 21-year-old Kandee Martin in 2001. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest and said he refused a plea deal guaranteeing a life sentence because he did not do it. Most of the evidence against Bowman at his trial was testimony from friends and family members. Many of them were offered deals to reduce prison time for related crimes or have charges dropped. 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. Bowman said he sold Martin drugs and sometimes when she didn't have money they would have sex. Part of Bowman's final appeal was that he didn't get a vigorous defense because his lawyer was racist and worried about what a jury in 2002 South Carolina would think about a Black man and a white woman in a relationship. The attorney "came to the jail and said, 'son, you need to plead guilty. You are charged with killing a white girl and you and your family are Black,' " Bowman wrote. The South Carolina Supreme Court also rejected Bowman's appeal calling it "meritless" and comments from Bowman's trial attorney suggesting he was extra sympathetic to the victim were taken out of context. Bowman has one more request before the U.S. Supreme Court, asking justices to pause his execution until another court can hear arguments over whether South Carolina's shield law is not fair to inmates because it releases so little information about the drug used to kill inmates and the execution procedures. An anesthesiologist told Bowman's lawyers that he fears South Carolina's lethal injection protocols don't take into account Bowman's weight, listed as 389 pounds (176 kilograms) in prison records. It can be difficult to properly get an IV into a blood vessel and determine the dose of the drugs needed in people with obesity. Lawyers for the state responded that obese people get IVs to have surgery and other procedures thousands of times a day. Bowman can also ask the governor for clemency. South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty presented to the governor's office nearly 10,000 petitions from across the country asking for the execution to be halted. "A life in prison sentence would also allow him to continue to have a relationship with the family that loves him so much. Commuting his sentence would be like giving him a second chance. A chance to be there for his daughter and for his new granddaughter," Bowman's aunt Lorraine Johnson said in a statement released by his lawyers. But no governor in the previous 45 executions in South Carolina since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 has taken mercy and reduced a death sentence to life in prison without parole in the modern era of the death penalty. The American Civil Liberties Union sued South Carolina this week, saying the privacy law is not fair because before it passed last year, governments released plenty of information on executions from the type of rope used by hangmen to the voltage used by the electric chair. South Carolina law allows inmates to choose between a new and so far unused firing squad, the electric chair and lethal injection. The two inmates executed since the death chamber restarted — Freddie Owens on Sept. 20 and Richard Moore on Nov. 1 — chose lethal injection.