With the country’s 1,000th execution since 1977 looming in North
Carolina, more than a dozen people gathered outside the S.C. State
House on Wednesday to beg for an end to the death penalty.
Kenneth Lee Boyd, 57, is scheduled to die at 2 a.m. Friday in
North Carolina for killing his estranged wife and her father.
In South Carolina, Shawn Paul Humphries, 34, is scheduled to die
at 6 p.m. Friday for the 1994 slaying of Dickie Smith, who ran a
Fountain Inn store.
His death would mark the 1,001st execution since the U.S. Supreme
Court reinstated the death penalty.
The morning protest came one day after Virginia Gov. Mark Warner
granted clemency to an inmate in line to be the 1,000th person
executed.
Those who spoke at the protest were part of the Voices of
Experience tour sponsored by the Center for Capital Litigation. They
visited Charleston and Charlotte on Tuesday and headed to Greenville
on Wednesday afternoon.
One protester was hairstylist SueZann Bosler of Miami, who worked
more than 10 years to get her father’s killer off death row.
Bosler and her father, Bill Bosler, pastor of the Church of the
Brethren, were attacked in 1986 at their Miami parsonage.
She watched James Bernard Campbell stab her father to death
before he stabbed her six times. Campbell is serving four
consecutive life terms.
“It took me 5½ years to forgive him,” Bosler said.
She said Campbell deserves to be punished, but a death sentence
is inappropriate.
“Why kill people who kill people to show us that killing people
is wrong?” she said.
Teresa Norris, director of the Center of Capital Litigation, is
representing Humphries and plans to witness his execution. Humphries
has a stay of execution application pending in the U.S. Supreme
Court and a clemency application pending in Gov. Mark Sanford’s
office.
One of Humphries’ final requests is to watch “The Wizard of Oz”
before he dies.
Norris said she hopes that won’t be for a long time.
“I hope it will bring more attention (to the death penalty).
Whether it does or not remains to be seen.”
Reach Leach at (803) 771-8549 or leleach@thestate.com.
The Associated Press
contributed.
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