US Supreme Court turns down SC inmate's appeal 1 day before execution

Yahoo

30-01-2025

South Carolina's execution chamber. (Provided by the SC Department of Corrections)
COLUMBIA — The nation's highest court turned down a death row inmate's request to halt his execution Thursday, clearing the way for him to face the death chamber.
Marion Bowman, 44, is slated to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Friday. He 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.
Soon after the Supreme Court's ruling, 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 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.
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 Stirling's arguments. No judges were noted as dissenting.
Following the federal appeals court's ruling, the only remaining way to halt Bowman's execution would be for Gov. Henry McMaster to grant him clemency. That's unlikely, considering McMaster, a former attorney general, has turned down requests for clemency for the past two inmates executed.