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.” 

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