CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Near the tail end of 2024, South Carolina executed its first person in more than a decade.

The stoppage in the Palmetto State was due to government officials being unable to procure the drugs used in the lethal injection. The General Assembly passed a shield law, and prison officials were able to find a compounding pharmacy willing to make the pentobarbital if its identity wasn’t made public, ending the 13-year pause.

Since then, the state has killed seven men in around 15 months. As 2025 comes to a close, South Carolina executed five men on death row.

READ MORE | “South Carolina Supreme Court upholds constitutionality of state’s 3 death penalty methods.”

Who were they, and what were they convicted of?

Marion Bowman Jr.

This undated photo shows Marion Bowman Jr. released by the South Carolina Department of Corrections. Bowman was put to death by lethal injection on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in the evening. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

Bowman was convicted of the 2001 killing of 21-year-old Kandee Martin. Martin was shot in the head, and her body was found in the trunk of a car that had been set on fire in Dorchester County.

Up until his death, Bowman maintained his innocence – going as far as deciding 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 didn’t commit.

Lindsey Vann, Bowman’s death penalty attorney, filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a last-minute stay of execution to review the case in the days leading up to his execution. Vann argued that witnesses against Bowman “were getting deals from the prosecutors to provide their testimony against Mr. Bowman, and we’ve uncovered information that his defense team wasn’t adequately representing him and really was pressuring him to plead guilty, despite not reviewing all of the discovery and not really preparing to confront the state’s case at trial.”

That appeal was eventually denied and Bowman was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 31. For his final works, Bowman penned a poem titled “Last Breath or Sigh.”

READ MORE ON THE CASE: “Marion Bowman Jr. executed in South Carolina, third inmate since September.”

Brad Keith Sigmon

FILE – This undated image provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows Brad Sigmon. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File)

Sigmon was convicted of the 2001 baseball bat murders of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, after they had evicted him from their trailer.

Prosecutors say Sigmon beat the couple to death at their Greenville County home, moving between their separate bedrooms until they died. He then kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, though she managed to escape.

His final words were used to urge his fellow people of faith to end the death penalty.

“An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty,” Sigmon said. “At that time, I was too ignorant to know how wrong that was. Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament.”

Sigmon became the first inmate executed by firing squad in the modern history of South Carolina on Friday, March 7.

READ MORE ON THE CASE: “Brad Sigmon executed by firing squad, first in South Carolina’s history.”

Mikal Deen Mahdi

This photo provided by South Carolina Department of Corrections shows Mikal Mahdi. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

Mahdi admitted to killing Orangeburg Public Safety officer James Myers in 2004, shooting him at least eight times and then burning his body. Myers’ wife later discovered his remains in a shed on the couple’s Calhoun County property, the same location where they had been married 15 months earlier. Mahdi was arrested in Florida while driving Myers’ unmarked police pickup truck.

Mahdi also confessed to killing Christopher Boggs, a convenience store clerk in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, three days earlier. Boggs was shot twice in the head while checking Mahdi’s identification. Mahdi was later sentenced to life in prison for that killing.

Despite multiple appeals, petitions to the governor, and claims that Mahdi had PTSD due to childhood trauma, Governor Henry McMaster denied clemency moments before Mahdi was put to death by firing squad.

Mahdi became the second inmate executed by firing squad in the modern history of South Carolina on Friday, April 11.

READ MORE ON THE CASE: “Witnesses recount harrowing final moments of Mikal Mahdi’s execution by firing squad in SC.”

Stephen Christopher Stanko

Stephen Christopher Stanko

Stanko, 57, was convicted for the April 8, 2005, murder of 43-year-old librarian Laura Ling, the murder of 74-year-old Conway resident Henry Lee Turner and the assault of Ling’s teenage daughter.

Stanko attempted to overturn his death penalty conviction of Ling by appearing before the South Carolina Supreme Court in September 2007. Stanko also tried to appeal his conviction in the Turner murder case in February 2013. At both appearances, the court reaffirmed his sentence. Before his murder convictions, Stanko was previously incarcerated in 1996 for assault and kidnapping, where he served 8.5 years in prison.

Stanko was executed by lethal injection on Friday, June 13, at Broad River Correctional Institution.

READ MORE ON THE CASE: “Stephen Stanko executed in South Carolina, sixth inmate since September.”

Stephen Bryant

Current SCDC photo of death row inmate Stephen Corey Bryant. (SCDC)

Bryant, 44, was sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of Willard “TJ” Tietjen. Prosecutors said Bryant shot Tietjen, burned his eyes, and scrawled messages on the walls using Tietjen’s blood.

He was also convicted of killing two other men in Sumter County within the same five-day span—one prior to Tietjen’s death and one after. Authorities said Bryant had offered the men rides and shot them in the back after they stepped out of his car to urinate along the roadside.

Defense attorneys argued that Bryant had been unraveling in the months before the killings, telling both a probation agent and an aunt that he needed help because he was overwhelmed by memories of being sexually abused as a child by several relatives.

His attorneys filed a series of final appeals and sought clemency in the days leading up to the execution, but Gov. Henry McMaster declined to intervene. Like his predecessors, McMaster has never granted clemency to an inmate on death row.

Bryant was executed by firing squad at Broad River Correctional Institution on Friday, Nov. 14.

READ MORE ON THE CASE: “Stephen Bryant executed by firing squad, third in South Carolina’s history.”

Who is still on death row?

As of Dec. 24, 23 men remain on South Carolina’s death row. Fourteen of the men on death row are white. Nine of the men are Black. The particulars of the cases change; however, what remains the same is the process.

South Carolina’s Supreme Court issues execution notices when a defendant has exhausted all of their normal appeals. Final appeals may continue up until the defendant is in the death chamber, as lawyers wait for the final word from the governor or the United States Supreme Court.

The full list of death row inmates in South Carolina as of Dec. 24:

• Bayan Aleksey
• Steven Vernon Bixby
• Ricky Lee Blackwell, Sr.
• Luzenski Allen Cottrell
• Donnie S. Council
• William Dickerson
• Ron Oneal Finklea
• Mar-Reece Hughes
• Jerry Buck Inman
• Jerome Jenkins, Jr.
• Timothy Ray Jones
• Marion A. Lindsey
• Tyree Alphonso Roberts
• James D. Robertson
• Mitchell Carlton Sims
• Norman Starnes
• Bobby Wayne Stone
• Gary Dubose Terry
• Andres Antonio Torres
• James William Wilson
• Louis Michael Winkler
• John Richard Wood
• Anthony Woods

• A Simpsonville woman was sentenced to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing her three-year-old daughter.
• An inmate already serving a 30-year sentence received an additional 40 years for his role in the abuse.
• The case was discovered during a state-wide crackdown on contraband cellphones in prisons.
• Prosecutors described the case as “evil” and one of the worst they have ever prosecuted.

A Simpsonville woman was sentenced to four decades in prison for what prosecutors called one of the most evil things a mother could do to a child.

Circuit Court Judge Patrick Fant III sentenced 26-year-old Abbygale El-Dier to 40 years.

Her boyfriend, Jacob Lance, 29, who was already serving a 30-year term for a 2015 Anderson County manslaughter case, was sentenced to 40 additional years for accessory to criminal sexual misconduct with a minor.

The case came to light after South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson launched a crackdown on contraband in state prisons. Jail staff discovered that El-Dier had sent Lance dozens of videos and photos showing her sexually abusing her three-year-old daughter. The three-year-old isn’t related to Lance.

Cortney Rea, assistant solicitor with the 13th Circuit, called it the worst case she has ever prosecuted, citing the severe trauma suffered by the toddler.

“I have tried to put this into words, but how vile these acts are, words fall short. Inhuman, disgusting, horrific, but what the defendant really did to her child is just evil,” Rea said. “Everyone who has touched this case has been negatively affected by their perversion. What this defendant (El-Dier) did to this child is incomprehensible.”

El-Dier also received a five-year prison sentence for first-degree sexual exploitation. Lance was also sentenced to three years for sexual exploitation of a minor. The three-year sentence will run concurrently with his previous sentence.

According to prosecutors, El-Dier and Lance messaged each other from August 2022 to August 2023, where the two talked about abusing the child. The pair also spoke about the idea of Lance abusing the child, along with drugging them and other children. Law enforcement became aware of the pair’s conversations after someone tipped the Simpsonville Police Department about the messages.

After the tip, law enforcement arrested El-Dier, and agents from the Attorney General’s Office obtained Lance’s phone.

El-Dier pled guilty in July, and Lance pled guilty in November.

‘Suffered abuse’

In March 2018, both Jacob and his brother, Ernest Lance, were found guilty of beating Todd Cantlay to death before setting his Pendleton home on fire. Jacob Lance is serving his 30-year prison sentence at the Lee County Correctional Facility in Bishopville.

El-Dier’s attorney, Greenville-based Will Hellams, and her family accused Lance of manipulating and psychologically abusing her.

“We will always regret not catching on to how truly severe the situation was every day for the rest of our lives. We are so disappointed that our granddaughter will have to grow up knowing about these horrific events. The therapy she will have to go through will never be enough,” the victim’s advocate said in the hearing.

Lance told Judge Fant a different story during the hearing, in which he claimed El-Dier initiated the dialogue about the abuse and that he felt blackmailed to continue the conversations. He said if he didn’t, she would cut off communication and potentially alert the Department of Corrections about his contraband cellphones.

“I felt forced to go along with it because I didn’t want her calling a search team and turning it all around on me to make it seem like I’m some creep,” Lance said.

Contraband crackdown by AG’s Office

This case, along with several others, is part of an initiative by the Attorney General’s Office to punish the possession of contraband cellphones.

The State Grand Jury investigated and indicted each case in the initiative.

El-Dier’s family said they reported Lance to the South Carolina Department of Corrections multiple times, but he would have several phones at a time and would switch between them to gain access to El-Dier.

David Fernandez, assistant deputy for the Attorney General’s Office, said the detailed conversations between El-Dier and Lance about the daughter’s abuse were only the tip of the iceberg in comparison to the things El-Dier did to her own daughter.

“What has been provided today, your honor, is simply a snippet of the luminous conversation between the two. These were no fantasies; these were actions that were acted out in real time by El-Dier for the benefit of Jacob Lance,” Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Fernandez said during the hearing.

For one day in January, a third flag will fly alongside the American and South Carolina flags atop the State House in Columbia. The honor will recognize South Carolina State University’s national football championship and mark a historic first for an HBCU in the state.

Gov. Henry McMaster approved a request to raise a flag bearing the Bulldogs’ logo above the Capitol dome, state officials said. As a result, South Carolina State will become the first HBCU to receive that recognition at the State House.

Officials will raise the flag on Jan. 19, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Afterward, they will present it to the football team during the program’s championship victory parade in Orangeburg.