South Carolina is preparing to execute the third inmate to be put to death since September as the state goes through a backlog of prisoners who exhausted their appeals while the state couldn’t find lethal injection drugs.

The state executed Bowman for the 2001 murder of 21-year-old Kandee Martin, a young mother who was killed five days before her son's second birthday.

Marion Bowman Jr., a 44-year-old inmate, is scheduled to be executed Friday night, marking the first execution in South Carolina this year. Bowman, a native of