Murder of Kandee Martin

On February 17, 2001, the burnt body of 21-year-old Kandee Louise Martin was discovered inside the trunk of her burned car in Dorchester County, South Carolina. According to court sources, the previous evening, 20-year-old Marion Bowman Jr., a longtime resident of Branchville, South Carolina, encountered Martin, whom he knew from high school, and asked her to repay money he said she owed him. When Martin told him to wait until she finished a conversation, Bowman reportedly said she would "be dead by dark." That evening, Martin drove to a house where Bowman and his friends had been drinking. Bowman and his cousin, James Tywan Gadson, got into her car and directed her to a remote location. According to Gadson's testimony, Bowman shot Martin multiple times after she pleaded for her life, citing a child she needed to care for, and then dragged her body into nearby woods. Bowman later enlisted another acquaintance, Travis Felder, to help return the car to the site, where Bowman put Martin's body in the trunk and set the car on fire.

In June 2001, a grand jury indicted Bowman on one count of murder and one count of third-degree arson. His trial began on May 17, 2002, in St. George, Dorchester County, with the prosecution led by First Circuit Solicitor Walter Bailey and the defense conducted by Norbert Cummings Jr. and Marva Hardee-Thomas. The defense challenged the credibility of Gadson's testimony, given his plea deal, and suggested the gun used as evidence might have been planted. On May 24, 2002, after three hours of deliberation, the jury found Bowman guilty on both counts. The same jury unanimously recommended a death sentence for the murder charge; Bowman also received a ten-year sentence for arson. Co-participants Travis Felder and James Gadson received lesser sentences under plea agreements: three years' probation for accessory after the fact for Felder, and 20 years' imprisonment for misprision of felony and accessory after the fact for Gadson.

Bowman's appeals were repeatedly denied, including by the South Carolina Supreme Court in 2005 and 2018, a federal district judge in 2020, and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022. He also participated in broader death-row litigation, including an ACLU-backed lawsuit over media access restrictions (dismissed in September 2024) and a joint challenge to South Carolina's use of the electric chair and firing squad, which the state's Supreme Court upheld on July 31, 2024.

Bowman was scheduled for execution as part of a series of six executions ordered in 2024. After a temporary reprieve tied to the winter holidays, the South Carolina Supreme Court signed his death warrant on January 3, 2025, setting his execution for January 31, 2025. Bowman selected lethal injection. In final appeals, he maintained his innocence, alleged prosecutorial misconduct and racial bias in his trial, and raised concerns about pentobarbital's effects, citing complications reported in a co-defendant's autopsy. His final appeal was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 30, 2025, and he declined to seek clemency. Marion Bowman Jr. was executed by lethal injection at Broad River Correctional Institution on January 31, 2025, and pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m. Martin's family stated they believed justice had been served.