Lindsey S. Vann, Executive Director of Justice 360, issued the following statement on behalf of Marion Bowman and his legal team, which includes the Capital Habeas Unit for the Fourth Circuit and Boyd Young of the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense:
“Maintaining his innocence, Marion Bowman, Jr. has made the painful decision not to petition Governor McMaster for clemency. Marion has steadfastly maintained his innocence of Kandee Martin’s murder, yet he has already spent more than half of his life on death row. He cannot in good conscience ask for a supposed mercy that would require him to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit.
“Marion’s execution would be a profound miscarriage of justice. The state convicted him with incentivized testimony from witnesses who were implicated in Ms. Martin’s murder but whose charges were dropped or sentences reduced in exchange for their unreliable testimony. The state withheld key evidence from the defense and jury--most notably, that the only witness who claimed to see Marion murder Ms. Martin had previously confessed to committing her murder himself. His own attorney, whose biases led him to pressure Marion to plead guilty instead of preparing an adequate defense, repeatedly introduced malignant racial stereotypes at trial.
“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 legitimize an unjust process that has already stolen so much of his life.”