New Analysis: Marion Bowman’s Scheduled Execution in South Carolina Raises Concerns About Youth Culpability, Fits Pattern of Disproportionate Executions of Young Black Men

When Marion Bowman was arrest­ed at age 20 for the mur­der of Kandee Martin, soci­ety did not con­sid­er him mature enough to drink alco­hol, rent a car, or enter a casi­no. Yet he was deemed old enough to be sen­tenced to death. Now 44, he has spent over half his life on South Carolina’s death row and is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 31. ​“Retribution is not pro­por­tion­al if the law’s most severe penal­ty is imposed on one whose cul­pa­bil­i­ty or blame­wor­thi­ness is dimin­ished, to a sub­stan­tial degree, by rea­son of youth and imma­tu­ri­ty,” the United States Supreme Court rea­soned when it pro­hib­it­ed the death penal­ty for crim­i­nal defen­dants under the age of 18 in Roper v. Simmons (2005). A grow­ing body of neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal research has found that the same deficits in crit­i­cal think­ing, impulse con­trol, and sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to peer pres­sure that moti­vat­ed the Roper Court to exempt juve­niles from exe­cu­tion also apply to ​“emerg­ing adults” aged 18 – 20. And evi­dence sug­gests that the death penal­ty is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly applied to youth­ful Black offend­ers like Mr. Bowman, who if his exe­cu­tion pro­ceeds will become the fifth Black pris­on­er in South Carolina put to death in the mod­ern era for a crime com­mit­ted under age 21 — com­pared to just one white prisoner.

Emerging Adults Experience Same Neurocognitive Deficits as Juveniles

The Constitution lim­its the death penal­ty to offend­ers who com­mit ​“a nar­row cat­e­go­ry of the most seri­ous crimes” and ​“whose extreme cul­pa­bil­i­ty makes them the most deserv­ing of exe­cu­tion.” In Roper, the Supreme Court held that juve­niles were less cul­pa­ble because of their dimin­ished capac­i­ty to con­trol their behav­ior. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writ­ing for the major­i­ty, relied on sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies that high­light­ed juve­niles’ ​“lack of matu­ri­ty and under­de­vel­oped sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty, [which] often result in impetu­ous and ill-con­sid­ered actions and deci­sions”; not­ed that they are ​“more vul­ner­a­ble or sus­cep­ti­ble to neg­a­tive influ­ences and out­side pres­sures, includ­ing peer pres­sure”; and argued that ​“the char­ac­ter of a juve­nile is not as well formed as that of an adult,” mak­ing reha­bil­i­ta­tion a greater possibility. 

Mr. Bowman’s case demon­strates sev­er­al com­mon ele­ments of youth­ful offens­es. He was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of Ms. Martin, age 21, in con­nec­tion with a drug-deal­ing dis­pute. Three oth­er young peo­ple were arrest­ed as par­tic­i­pants, and accord­ing to Mr. Bowman’s defense team, ​“the only alleged eye­wit­ness con­fessed to com­mit­ting the mur­der him­self.” Mr. Bowman has main­tained his inno­cence. ​“I regret the role I had in deal­ing to Kandee and know that her addic­tion prob­a­bly led to her death. But I did not do this,” he said in a written statement. 

The past two decades of neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and human devel­op­ment research have revealed that emerg­ing adults share the key brain func­tion char­ac­ter­is­tics with juve­niles that formed the basis of Roper. The sen­sa­tion-seek­ing and reward-seek­ing fea­tures of the brain devel­op dur­ing puber­ty, but the ​“cog­ni­tive con­trol sys­tem” that reg­u­lates impuls­es, pro­motes long-term plan­ning, and resists peer pres­sure does not ful­ly devel­op until around age 25. In 2018, the American Bar Association called for the pro­hi­bi­tion of the death penal­ty for ​“any indi­vid­ual who was 21 years old or younger at the time of the offense,” refer­ring to the ​“grow­ing med­ical con­sen­sus that key areas of the brain rel­e­vant to deci­sion-mak­ing and judg­ment con­tin­ue to devel­op into the early twenties.” 

In a pair of 2017 deci­sions, the Fayette Circuit Court in Kentucky ruled that the Commonwealth’s death penal­ty statute was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al as applied to peo­ple under 21 at the time of their crime. The court cred­it­ed Dr. Laurence Steinberg, a lead­ing researcher in the field, who tes­ti­fied that ​“ado­les­cents [under 21] are more impul­sive, more like­ly to mis­per­ceive risk, less able to reg­u­late behav­ior, more eas­i­ly emo­tion­al­ly aroused, and, impor­tant­ly, more capa­ble of change.” Dr. Steinberg argued that ​“if a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of Roper were heard today, know­ing what we know now, one could’ve made the very same argu­ments about 18‑, 19‑, and 20-year-olds that were made about 16- and 17-year-olds in Roper.” Judge Ernesto Scorsone inter­pret­ed Dr. Steinberg’s find­ings to mean, ​“put sim­ply, under feel­ings of stress, anger, fear, threat, etc., the brain of a twen­ty-year-old func­tions sim­i­lar­ly to a six­teen- or sev­en­teen-year-old.” The judge con­clud­ed that “[i]f the sci­ence in 2005 man­dat­ed the rul­ing in Roper, the sci­ence in 2017 man­dates this rul­ing.“¹

Arguing that Roper should be extend­ed nation­al­ly to pro­tect defen­dants under the age of 21 from the death penal­ty, schol­ar Andrew Michaels sum­ma­rized evi­dence show­ing ​“crime rates esca­lat­ing rapid­ly between ages 14 and 15, top­ping out between ages 16 and 20, and prompt­ly deesca­lat­ing.”² Eighteen to twen­ty-year-olds ​“share many of the same mit­i­gat­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics as juve­niles,” Mr. Michaels argued. ​“They are psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pre­dis­posed to reck­less behav­ior and they are sus­cep­ti­ble to neg­a­tive peer influ­ences. These tran­sient ten­den­cies dimin­ish their cul­pa­bil­i­ty and negate the tra­di­tion­al death penal­ty jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of ret­ri­bu­tion and deterrence.”

Emerging Adults Executed in South Carolina Are Disproportionately Black

The ​“adul­ti­fi­ca­tion” of Black youth has been demon­strat­ed in vir­tu­al­ly every facet of the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem. According to the Center for Policing Equity, ​“the peri­od of time dur­ing which White youth are not expect­ed to be ful­ly respon­si­ble for their actions can extend well into their late 20s,” while ​“Black chil­dren are often treat­ed as adults by age 13, if not well before, reg­u­lar­ly per­ceived as old­er, less inno­cent, and more threat­en­ing than their White same-age peers.” Black chil­dren make up 15% of the youth pop­u­la­tion but half of ele­men­tary school arrests and half of trans­fers to adult court. They are also five times more like­ly to be com­mit­ted to juve­nile facil­i­ties. In a cap­i­tal case, these racial bias­es may man­i­fest in pros­e­cu­tors offer­ing plea deals and lenien­cy to young white offend­ers while seek­ing death for young Black offend­ers even when the facts of the cas­es are similar. 

A new analy­sis by the Death Penalty Information Center finds that in the mod­ern era (since 1976), five peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed in South Carolina for crimes com­mit­ted under the age of 21 — and four of those peo­ple (80%) have been Black. The sole white per­son was James Roach, who was also the only juve­nile exe­cut­ed in South Carolina in the mod­ern era, put to death by elec­tro­cu­tion in 1986 for a crime com­mit­ted at age 17. Since then, every­one aged 18 – 20 at the time of the crime who has been exe­cut­ed in the state has been Black. This find­ing tracks a recent nation­al study con­clud­ing that 78% of emerg­ing adults sen­tenced to death post-Roper were peo­ple of col­or. DPI’s research also shows a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant six-year dif­fer­ence in the medi­an age at crime for those exe­cut­ed by South Carolina: the medi­an age is 29.7 for white peo­ple but just 23.4 for Black people.

South Carolina resumed exe­cu­tions in 2024 after a thir­teen-year pause, killing Freddie Owens by lethal injec­tion on September 20. Mr. Owens, who was also known as Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, was sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a clerk dur­ing a con­ve­nience store rob­bery that occurred when Mr. Owens was just 19 years old. The key wit­ness against Mr. Owens was his co-defen­dant Steven Golden. Two days before Mr. Owens’ exe­cu­tion, Mr. Golden wrote that he false­ly accused Mr. Owens as the shoot­er, but courts reject­ed Mr. Owens’ attor­neys’ requests for a stay of exe­cu­tion to inves­ti­gate the claims. 

Mr. Owens was sen­tenced to death in 1999 and Mr. Bowman in 2002, in the years after the so-called ​“super­preda­tor” myth took root. The term was first used in 1995 and referred to young ​“inner-city” men, under­stood to be Black or Hispanic, who were sup­pos­ed­ly ​“mur­der­ers, rapists, and mug­gers” with no regard for human life. Many states increased penal­ties or removed court pro­tec­tions for youth­ful offend­ers as a result. The the­o­ry has since been wide­ly debunked and sev­er­al young peo­ple con­vict­ed in high-pro­file racial­ized cas­es have been exon­er­at­ed, includ­ing the ​“Central Park Five.” John J. DiIulio Jr., the Princeton pro­fes­sor who pop­u­lar­ized the term, lat­er dis­avowed it. He worked to pro­mote fund­ing for social ser­vices and alter­na­tives to incar­cer­a­tion for youth. ​“If I knew then what I know now, I would have shout­ed for the pre­ven­tion of crimes,” he said.

Conclusion 

“The rea­sons why juve­niles are not trust­ed with the priv­i­leges and respon­si­bil­i­ties of an adult also explain why their irre­spon­si­ble con­duct is not as moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble as that of an adult,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the plu­ral­i­ty in Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), which barred the death penal­ty for offend­ers aged 16 or younger at the time of the crime. Like juve­niles, young peo­ple under age 21 are not trust­ed with sev­er­al impor­tant priv­i­leges and respon­si­bil­i­ties in soci­ety — and the sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus on brain devel­op­ment explains why. As a group, ​“emerg­ing adults” do not have the same capac­i­ty as adults to make rea­soned, inde­pen­dent deci­sions and curb emo­tion­al impuls­es. This research rais­es ques­tions about whether Marion Bowman’s death sen­tence for a crime that took place when he was just 20 years old, in a state with a his­to­ry of dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly exe­cut­ing young Black men, meets the ​“extreme cul­pa­bil­i­ty” stan­dard for the death penal­ty that the Constitution demands.