Death row inmate opts not to appeal to SC governor for mercy

COLUMBIA — Marion Bowman has decided not to seek clemency from South Carolina’s governor, guaranteeing he will face the death chamber Friday night.

The death row inmate continues to maintain his innocence. But “he cannot in good conscience ask for a supposed mercy that would require him to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit,” reads a statement issued Thursday evening on behalf of Bowman and his legal team.

The decision followed two court rulings earlier Thursday that denied Bowman’s attempts for a legal reprieve. Gov. Henry McMaster was his last hope for avoiding his scheduled death by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Friday.

McMaster, the state’s former attorney general, has turned down requests for clemency for the past two inmates executed. It was highly unlikely that McMaster would have granted a clemency request. But it’s also highly unusual for a death row inmate not to at least try.

Bowman’s legal team noted that the 44-year-old has spent more than half of his life on death row.

“After more than two decades of battling a broken system that has failed him at every turn, Marion’s decision is a powerful refusal to legitimize an unjust process that has already stolen so much of his life,” the statement concluded.

Bowman was convicted in 2002 of shooting an Orangeburg mother to death, then stuffing her body in the trunk of her car and lighting it on fire.

Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his request to stop the execution.

Soon after that, a federal appeals court denied his request to know more about the drugs that will kill him, echoing a federal judge’s ruling earlier this week.

In his appeal to the nation’s high court, Bowman’s attorneys argued that his own defense attorney during his trial based his arguments on “odious racial stereotypes” about Bowman, who is Black, and his victim, who was white.

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Bowman’s attorneys claimed that his initial defense team referred to Kandee Martin, the woman Bowman was convicted of killing, as a “little white girl,” while calling Bowman a man, despite him being younger than her.

The appeal also argued Bowman’s original attorney made comments suggesting that there was no reason Bowman would have been alone with Martin except to kill her, based on what his current attorneys argued was a racial stereotype.

Those quotes were taken out of context, attorneys for Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling argued in response. If Bowman had a problem with his attorney, he had more than 20 years to bring that up, the reply continued.

In a two-sentence order Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the state’s arguments. No judges were noted as dissenting.

Bowman is set to be the third death row inmate executed by lethal injection since the state restarted executions in September. At least three more executions are expected in the coming months.

Bowman’s legal team said executing Bowman will be a “profound miscarriage of justice.” Repeating arguments in recent court filings, they noted that the witnesses who testified against Bowman at trial had an incentive to do so, since their own sentences were dropped or reduced.

SC Daily Gazette Editor Seanna Adcox contributed to this report.