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.

In the statement detailing his final words, Bowman said he did not kill 21-year-old Kandee Martin. Martin was killed in 2001 and Bowman was convicted in Dorchester County in 2002.

South Carolina's Marion Bowman Jr. is set to be the first person executed this year on Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to hear his case.