Execution set by S.C. top court in Dorchester County murder case

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — An execution date has been set by the South Carolina Supreme Court for the man convicted in the 2001 murder of a 21-year-old woman.

Marion Bowman, Jr, 44, is set to be put to death on Jan. 31, according to a state Supreme Court order.

The state Supreme Court paused executions for the holidays.

Bowman is on death row for the killing of 21-year-old Kandee Martin in 2001. Martin was shot in the head and her body was found in the trunk of a car that had been burned.

Bowman made his final appeal last month asking to halt his execution until a full hearing could be held. They said Bowman’s lawyer at his trial called the victim, who was white, “a little girl,” while referring to Bowman, who is Black, as a man even though he was a year younger than Martin at the time of her killing.

Much of the evidence against Bowman at his trial came from friends and family who testified against him as part of plea deals. Prosecutors produced evidence of a sexual relationship between Bowman and Martin, although he wasn’t charged with rape.

Bowman, 44, has spent more than half his life on death row.

Bowman is scheduled to be the third inmate executed in South Carolina since the General Assembly ed a shield law in 2023 allowing secrecy about where the state obtains lethal injection drugs. The state didn’t execute anyone for 13 years and ran out of the drugs.

Richard Moore were both executed earlier this year. Outside of Bowman, three other inmates are out of regular appeals and have been placed on a schedule for executions as quickly as every five weeks now that 2025 has begun.

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