SC inmate not entitled to know more about fatal drugs, judge rules

COLUMBIA — Other options are available for a death row inmate who claimed he has a right to know more about the drugs that will kill him, a federal judge decided Tuesday.

Marion Bowman’s attorneys indicated in a filing Tuesday that they intend to appeal the decision. With Bowman’s execution slated for Friday, the federal appeals court will have days to decide whether to delay the process long enough to hear him out.

Bowman, who chose to die by lethal injection, asked the court to require officials tell him more about the fatal drug. Specifically, Bowman’s attorneys want to know when and how the drugs were tested, when they expire and how the Department of Corrections stores them, they wrote in a petition.

Nearly everything about the drug used for executions — the sedative pentobarbital — is kept secret under a 2023 law that worked as intended by encouraging companies to sell to the state. Bowman has the right to verify the potency and purity of the drugs to be sure he won’t die a painful death, his attorneys argued.

3rd SC death row inmate chooses to die by lethal injection

Bowman’s arguments did not persuade U.S. District Judge Jacquelyn Austin, who came to a similar conclusion in a separate case ahead of the state’s first execution in over 13 years last September.

State law requires the prisons director to determine after a death warrant is issued whether each possible method of execution — lethal injection, firing squad and electrocution — is ready to use.

Nothing in state law requires the director to give any more information about the methods, Austin determined in turning down Bowman’s claims otherwise.

If Bowman didn’t feel that he had enough information about lethal injection, he could have chosen one of those other two methods by which to die, Austin wrote.

“He has been allowed to choose the execution method that he and his lawyers believe is best for him, using whatever criteria he preferred, based on the information available to him,” Austin wrote.

Bowman was sentenced to death in 2002 for killing an Orangeburg mother, stuffing her body in the trunk of her car and lighting it on fire. He is one of four inmates who could be executed in the coming months after the state restarted executions in September.