The state executed Bowman for the 2001 murder of 21-year-old Kandee Martin, a young mother who was killed five days before her son's second birthday.

After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the final appeal of a South Carolina inmate, he decided not to ask the governor for clemency, saying he didn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison for a murder he has always insisted he did not commit.

South Carolina has executed their first death row prisoner this year, Marion Bowman Jr., who has been in prison since 2002 after being found guilty of killing a friend - though Bowman maintained he wa