As the South Carolina Department of Corrections prepares to resume executing people for the first time since 2011, the ACLU of South Carolina has filed a motion to allow the publication of an interview with a man incarcerated on death row.
In the latest filing before the U.S. District Court of South Carolina on August 13th, the ACLU-SC filed a Motion for Expedited Consideration of Preliminary Injunction. The organization are asking the court to act quickly before it is too late to tell the story of Marion Bowman Jr., a man who has been sentenced to death.
“That South Carolina shrouds capital punishment in secrecy acknowledges a powerful truth: The death penalty is barbaric and unjust, and public scrutiny would end it for good," said ACLU-SC Legal Director Allen Chaney. "The public deserves a chance to meaningfully encounter the person being murdered on their behalf. We aim to give them that,”
In the ongoing federal court case ACLU-SC v. Stirling, initially filed in February 2024, the ACLU-SC is challenging the state prison system’s total ban on news media interviews with incarcerated people. As part of the lawsuit, they are seeking to publish an interview with Bowman.
That case became more urgent on July 31st, when the S.C. Supreme Court ruled to allow the state to execute incarcerated people by electrocution, firing squad, or lethal injection. Bowman is preparing to petition the governor to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment.
