Marion Bowman Jr, 44, was executed at a prison in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, for the 2001 murder of 21-year-old Kandee Martin, the state’s Department of Corrections said.
Martin’s body was placed in the trunk of her car, which was set on fire.
Bowman, who was 20 at the time, acknowledged selling drugs to Martin but denied any involvement in her murder and professed his innocence in a final statement.
“I did not kill Kandee Martin,” he said. “I’m innocent of the crimes I’m here to die for.”
Bowman said if his death brings some relief to Martin’s family “then I guess it will have served a purpose.”
“I hope they find peace,” he said.
Bowman also read a poem he had written which included the line “Did I take a last breath or sigh of relief?”
Bowman had filed numerous appeals seeking to put off his execution, including a claim that the attorney who defended him at trial “held racist attitudes.”
Bowman is black. Martin was white.
Bowman’s attorneys also argued that two witnesses who testified against him and received plea deals suffered from “credibility issues.”
Bowman further sought to halt his execution because of the possibility of complications stemming from his size – he weighed nearly 180kg.
That would expose him to a “potentially torturous execution process,” his lawyers said.
A judge rejected the appeal, saying Bowman could have opted for the electric chair or a firing squad.
A journalist from the South Carolina Daily Gazette who witnessed the execution said it began at 6.04pm with Bowman taking several deep breaths which subsided into shallower breaths.
Bowman’s chest stopped moving at 6.06pm and a doctor entered the execution chamber at 6.26pm and pronounced him dead, the Daily Gazette reporter said.
There were 25 executions in the US last year. Three used the controversial method of suffocation by nitrogen gas, while the rest relied on lethal injection.
Four more executions are scheduled over the next two weeks – two in Texas, one in Alabama and one in Florida.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others – California, Oregon and Pennsylvania – have moratoriums in place.
Three states that had paused executions – Arizona, Ohio and Tennessee – recently announced plans to resume them.
President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in the White House called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”
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