Did trial counsel provide prejudicially deficient assistance of counsel by repeatedly introducing and amplifying noxious racial stereotypes about Bowman, as condemned by this Court in Buck v. Davis?

Marion Bowman’s capital trial counsel predicated his defense upon, and repeatedly injected, odious racial stereotypes about Bowman, a black man, and his relationship with the victim, Kandee Martin, a white woman. While Bowman maintained his innocence, and the State’s case was built on incentivized testimony from others charged in Martin’s murder, trial counsel pressured him to plead guilty because he believed any jury would convict him based on race. Despite that surety, trial counsel conducted no voir dire into the prospective jurors’ biases. While introducing evidence in sentencing that Bowman sold drugs to support his family, trial counsel eschewed evidence in either the trial or sentencing documenting that Martin exchanged her possessions and sex for drugs – which would have undermined the most inculpatory evidence in the state’s case – because he did not want to slander the “little white girl.” Instead, trial counsel told the jury that the prosecution was trying to inflame them by suggesting a sexual relationship between a black man and a white woman – a notion he considered so provocative that he apologized for even mentioning it. As trial counsel’s subsequent post -conviction testimony established, these arguments were informed by his own racialized preconceptions, which left him unable to believe that Bowman’s interactions with Martin on the day of her death could have any explanation other than his murdering her. The Supreme Court of South Carolina nevertheless ratified these failures as trial strategy. The question presented is: Did trial counsel provide prejudicially deficient assistance of counsel by repeatedly introducing and amplifying noxious racial stereotypes about Bowman, as ii condemned by this Court in Buck v. Davis , 580 U.S. 100, 12122 (2017), and in contravention of this Court’s precedent s seeking the eradication of racial prejudices in the criminal justice system.