COLUMBIA -- The aunt of a Spartanburg man scheduled to be executed Friday for the 1994 murder of a Simpsonville store owner tearfully pleaded for his life on the Statehouse steps Wednesday.

Shawn Paul Humphries was sentenced to death in 1994 after he was convicted of shooting Mendel Alton "Dickie" Smith during a botched robbery on New Year's Day that year.

Humphries' defense lawyers met inside with Gov. Mark Sanford's legal counsel to discuss his plea for clemency during the protest by his aunt and others on the steps.

"I sure don't think this is justice," said Terri Piotrowski of Belton, Humphries' aunt. She also asked for adults to do more to protect children from abuse. Humphries was the victim of abuse as a child, she said.

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Kathy Carpenter of Greenville County, one of Smith's sisters, said while her family is praying for Humphries and his family, she believes his punishment was the result of bad choices Humphries made.

"If he had chosen not to be where he is, we would not have to be where we are in our lives," she said.

Curran Smith of Fountain Inn, one of Smith's brothers, said he doesn't begrudge Humphries' family in their protest.

"I can understand his family doing everything under the sun to keep him alive," he said. "If I could have been there for Dickie, I would have tried to keep him alive. If Sanford commutes the sentence, it's not going to bother me one bit."

Joel Sawyer, a spokesman for Sanford, said the governor would likely make a decision by Friday morning.

"In a case like this where this case has already been through an exhaustive legal process, the governor's legal counsel is not inclined to recommend that the governor grant clemency," he said.

Humphries is seeking a stay of his execution from the U.S. Supreme Court, said Teresa Norris, one of his lawyers.

Piotrowski joined several speakers from a group opposed to capital punishment in protesting Humphries' planned execution. The group later came to Greenville to deliver the same message.

Choking back tears, she read from a letter in which she said she regretted not taking her nephew when he was a child. His father taught him about stealing, drugs and sexual abuse, she said.

Humphries' father, who died years ago, raped his mother at knifepoint after she left him because of his abuse, the woman testified during Humphries' trial. He was conceived as the result of the rape, she told the court.

"I am not trying to make excuses," she said Wednesday, "but I just want people to see what the world is doing to our children. We will not remember the ugly things that are said about him in the press. We know they are not true. We will remember the curly-haired boy that loved rocks, the river and baseball."

Humphries' lawyers argued in their written clemency plea before Sanford that he should be granted life without parole "both to prevent a miscarriage of justice and as a matter of mercy."

But they didn't argue what they said are the usual claims of "innocence, mental illness or the other usual justifications for the grant of clemency."

They pointed out that the prosecutor at the time, Joe Watson of Greenville, erred in his closing arguments by drawing side-by-side comparisons of Humphries' and Smith's lives.

A panel of three federal appellate judges overturned the death sentence last year, citing Watson's arguments. The full 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., reversed that ruling this year, clearing the way for Humphries' execution.

Humphries' lawyers also argued that capital punishment is meant for the most "extreme" cases of murder and that numerous people are "not sentenced to death for far more cold-blooded, calculated crimes."

"Indeed out of the 997 people executed in this country (from 1977 to the present)," the lawyers say in their appeal, "almost none of them were sentenced to die based on facts such as this where there was no intent to kill, where the defendant simply panicked during an attempted felony when the victim grabbed a gun."

Also speaking on Humphries' behalf Wednesday was the executive director of the South Carolina Christian Action Council, representing 16 denominations and one million churchgoers.

The Rev. Brenda Kneece said the death penalty in this case "is not a fair or just sentence."

Joining Kneece in speaking against Humphries' execution was SueZann Bosler of Florida, who was stabbed and watched her father stabbed to death in 1986; Kathleen Hawk Norman, the foreman of a New Orleans jury that condemned a defendant in 1986 who was later moved off death row because of problems in the case; and Shujaa Graham of Maryland, who served six years on California's Death Row before being exonerated in 1981.

"It's a shame that it is tried so arbitrarily," Graham said of the death penalty. "I was in the general prison population before I went to Death Row with thousands of people who were there for one, two and three murders, and they just had life sentences. We as a nation have the right to protect our citizens. But I don't think we have the right to kill."

Norman said she participated in a wrongful conviction. "The system is quite literally fatally flawed," she said.