Shujaa Graham has never met Shawn Paul Humphries, but he shares a dubious kinship with the man scheduled to become the 35th prisoner executed in South Carolina since 1977.

Graham can't stop his tears when he recalls the years he spent on death row in California before his death conviction was overturned and another trial set him free. Today he's a graying, 55-year-old grandfather living in Maryland who counts himself among some 200 former death row inmates "walking around that would be dead."

Graham was part of a small but diverse group of death penalty opponents who stopped in Charleston on Tuesday, three days before Humphries is scheduled to be executed. Humphries, 34, was convicted of a 1994 shooting death at a Fountain Inn convenience store during an attempted robbery. The United States is approaching its 1,000th execution since executions resumed in 1977.

Graham and other death penalty opponents, including a Florida woman who was nearly stabbed to death by the same man convicted of murdering her father, spoke Tuesday night at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Calhoun Street. Earlier, they met with media on the front steps of the nearby Charleston County Library.

They were part of the "Voices of Experience" tour, sponsored by the Center for Capital Litigation, which represents indigent inmates sentenced to death.

They weren't arguing that South Carolina and other states should open the doors to death row and turn everyone out, but they said the death penalty is problematic because it's often imposed unfairly and arbitrarily.

"Less than 1 percent of the people who are eligible for the death penalty are getting the death penalty," said Abe Bonowitz, once a death penalty supporter who is now director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Like many opponents, Bonowitz argued that who ends up on death row has less to do with the crime and more to do with the wealth of the defendant and his ability to hire competent counsel, the location of

the crime and the races of the defendant and victim.

Humphries panicked during a robbery, but the killing wasn't cold-blooded, Bonowitz said.

In South Carolina, death penalty indigent-defense lawyers are so accomplished in their experience and resources that it's unlikely a defendant wouldn't be competently represented, 9th Circuit Solicitor Ralph Hoisington said. South Carolina juries also are given the option of sentencing a defendant to life without parole, he said.

The protection of life without parole is mitigated somewhat by recent prisoner escapes, Hoisington said.

Bonowitz's argument was lost on Charleston visitor David Simpson Jr., who wouldn't accept a blue-hued flier advocating halting Humphries' execution.

"I don't support your position," said Simpson, who's from Connecticut and was in town to visit his son on James Island. Simpson said he's done volunteer work with inmates through his church and "there are some bad guys beyond help."

Contact Nita Birmingham at 745-5858 or nbirmingham@post andcourier.com.