South Carolina is set to execute its third inmate since September, as the state works through a backlog of death row prisoners.
Marion Bowman Jr.'s execution is scheduled for Friday evening.
Bowman, 44, was convicted of murdering a friend, whose burned body was found in a car trunk. He has consistently maintained his innocence, with his lawyers arguing his conviction relied on testimony from individuals who received deals from prosecutors.
Bowman has spent over two decades on death row. Despite being offered a plea deal for a life sentence, he chose to go to trial, proclaiming his innocence.
Friday's execution will follow the state lifting a 13-year pause caused in part because state officials could not obtain lethal injection drugs.
The General Assembly passed a shield law and prison officials were able to find a pharmacy willing to make the pentobarbital if its identity wasn't made public.
Bowman is not asking Governor Henry McMaster for clemency. His lawyer, Lindsey Vann, said Bowman didn't want to spend more decades in prison for a crime he did not commit.
“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 legitimise an unjust process that has already stolen so much of his life," Vann said in a statement Thursday.
No governor in the previous 45 executions in South Carolina since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 has given mercy and reduced a death sentence to life in prison without parole.
Bowman was convicted in Dorchester County in 2002 of murder in the killing of 21-year-old Kandee Martin in 2001. A number of friends and family members testified against him as part of plea deals.
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 drugs to Martin, who was a friend of his for years and sometimes she would pay with sex, but he denied killing her.
Bowman is Black like the other two inmates executed since the pause ended. The final appeal from his lawyers said his trial attorney had too much sympathy for his white victim. The South Carolina Supreme Court called the argument meritless.
One other concern raised by Bowman's lawyers is his weight. An anaesthesiologist said he fears South Carolina’s secret lethal injection protocols don’t take into account Bowman is 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.
Prison officials used two doses of pentobarbital given 11 minutes apart in the previous execution, according to autopsy records.
Before the 13-year pause, South Carolina was among the busiest states for executions. A shield law passed last year allowed the supplier of the pentobarbital used to kill inmates to stay secret and prison officials were able to find a compounding pharmacy willing to sell the drug.
The state Supreme Court cleared the way to restart executions in July. Freddie Owens was put to death by lethal injection Sept. 20 and Richard Moore was executed on Nov. 1.
The court will allow an execution every five weeks until the other three inmates who have run out of appeals are put to death.
South Carolina has put 45 inmates to death since the death penalty was restarted in the US. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it was carrying out an average of three executions a year. Nine states have put more inmates to death.
But since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled. The state had 63 condemned inmates in early 2011. It currently has 30. About 20 inmates have been taken off death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals. Others have died of natural causes.