A South Carolina The prisoner was executed on Friday, the third time in four months the state carried out the death penalty while it went through a backlog of prisoners who had exhausted their professions when the state could not get deadly injection medicines.
Marion Bowman Jr., 44, was executed at 6:27 PM by fatal injection for his conviction of murder in the death of his friend, the 21-year-old Kandee Martin, whose burnt body was found in the trunk of a car in 2001.
Bowman has maintained his innocence since his arrest. He said at the start of his last explanation: “I did not kill Kandee Martin.”
His lawyers praised questions about his conviction and noted that he was convicted of the word of various friends and family members who received pleas with officers of justice in exchange for their testimony.
South Carolina -Man who was sentenced to death, concerned about drugs after implementation
Marion Bowman Jr., 44, was performed by a fatal injection at 6:27 PM (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
When the Death Chamber’s curtain opened, Bowman looked briefly at his lawyer on the other side of the glass in the witness room before looking back at the ceiling and closed his eyes, opened his eyes once or twice as he looked up.
After Bowman’s lawyer had finished reading his last explanation and poem, his breathing became heavy and puffed his lips as he exhaled. His breathing stopped in less than a minute. Twenty minutes later, a doctor listened to his chest with a stethoscope and put a hand in his neck, knocked him while she was ready.
In his last explanation, Bowman said that prisoners in the death cell might be considered the worst of the worst, but they all grew and changed what “they were when they had their moment that everything cost them.”
“I know the family of Kandee is in pain, they are rightly angry,” said Bowman. “If my death brings them some enlightenment and ability to concentrate on the good and funny stories, then I think it will have served a goal. I hope they find peace.”
Before his last meal, Bowman had baked seafood, including shrimp, fish and oysters, as well as chicken wings and tenders, onion rings, banana pudding, German chocolate cake, cranberry juice and pineapple juice.
Bowman was offered a plea for a life sentence, but went to court instead because he said he was not guilty.
His execution was the third in South Carolina since September, when the State-out ended one of the busiest for executions-a 13-year-old break when performing the death penalty. The break was partly caused by the State that had difficulty obtaining deadly injection drugs after the stock had expired because of the concerns of pharmaceutical companies that they should reveal the medicines to state officers. The state legislator then approved a shield law, with which civil servants could keep the suppliers of fatal injection products private.
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This photo shows the death room of the state in Columbia, South Carolina, including the electric chair, right, and a chair of the shooting team, on the left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File)
In July, the Supreme Court The way released to resume executions. Freddie Owens was put to death on 20 September and Richard Moore was executed on November 1, with both men chosen to die through a fatal injection.
This was the first execution in the US this year after 25 last year was performed in the country. The court allows an execution every five weeks until the other three prisoners who have suffered more appeal are put to death.
South Carolina has executed 46 prisoners since the death penalty resumed in the US in 1976. In the early 2000s, the state performed an average of three executions per year. Only nine states have killed more prisoners.
Bowman did not ask the Republican government Henry McMaster for Clemency, but the Governor’s office still released a letter that denied clementia and noted that he received informal requests and petitions to save Bowman’s life.
No governor in the state has ever reduced a death sentence to life in prison without conditional release in the modern era of the death penalty.
Bowman’s lawyer, Lindsey Vann, said that his client did not want to spend an extra decades in prison for a crime he did not commit. He had already spent more than half of his life in the death cell.
“After more than two decades of battles with a broken system that has failed him every turn, Marion’s decision is a powerful refusal to legitimize an unjust trial that has already stolen so much of his life,” Vann said on Thursday in one declaration.
Bowman was convicted in Dorchester County In 2002 in connection with Martin’s death the year before. Various friends and relatives testified against him as part of the plea with public prosecutors.
A friend said that Bowman was Van Streek because Martin owed him money, while a second testified that Bowman believed that Martin was wearing a recording device to have him arrested.
The room where prisoners are performed in Columbus, South Carolina. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
Bowman said he had sold drugs to Martin, who was a friend of him for years, and sometimes she would pay with sex, but he said he hadn’t killed her.
The last appeal of his current lawyers argued that Bowman’s process lawyer was not prepared and had too much sympathy for the white victim and not Bowman, who is black. The Supreme Court of South Carolina rejected the argument.
Bowman’s lawyers also gave concern about his execution because of his weight. An anesthetist said he feared that the secret fatal injection protocols of South Carolina did not take into account that Bowman, mentioned as 389 pounds in prison registers, was heavier, because it can be difficult to place an IV well in a blood vessel and the dose too Determining drugs required in people with obesity.
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His lawyers were concerned that the medicine that used to kill Moore in November required two large doses apart for more than 11 minutes.
An anesthesiist who was involved in assessing Moore’s autopsierecords said they showed liquid in the lungs, so that lawyers believe that he “consciously experienced feelings of drowning and suffocation during the 23 minutes needed to bring about his death.”
The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
