COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A man who spent nearly two decades on South Carolina's death row for killing two people has been granted life in prison without parole two years after a federal court overturned his original sentence, news outlets report.
A Lexington County judge signed off on the deal for on Monday.
In 2002, Allen killed four people: a woman he picked up on a street in Columbia; a man who was in the restaurant where Allen worked; and two men at a Surry County, North Carolina, convenience store. He was sentenced to death for the South Carolina slayings. He pleaded guilty to the North Carolina killings and was sentenced to life in prison.
A federal appeals court in 2022, saying the judge who ordered his execution ignored psychiatric problems stemming from a mother who started kicking him out of the house when he was in fourth grade and a stepfather who pointed an empty gun at his head and pulled the trigger.
Instead of seeking the death penalty again, prosecutors agreed to the life sentence and Allen, 44, agreed to never appeal, according to the news reports.
Allen's life sentence leaves 32 inmates on South Carolina's death row, down from 63 in early 2011, when the state last carried out an execution.
The inmates have either died of natural causes or, like Allen, been resentenced to other prison terms after successfully appealing their death sentences.
South Carolina's death penalty has been in limbo for 13 years since the state's supply of lethal injection drugs expired and the pharmacy that provided them refused to continue if it couldn't do so anonymously.
The state has passed a shield law, changed its lethal injection method to one drug and . Legislators also passed a law allowing executions by firing squad, as well as the century-old electric chair. But the legality of the shield law and whether death by bullets to the heart or an electric shock are cruel and unusual punishments by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
In Allen's case, prosecutors said the families of his Columbia victims decided after his death sentence was overturned in 2022 that they were ready to be done with the legal battle and have him sentenced to life.
Allen killed Scott Farewell's brother, Jedediah Harr, as Harr tried to protect a pregnant woman. Farewell said he wanted Allen dead until about 15 years ago, when he heard an interview with an Alabama prison warden who talked about the frank, heartfelt and emotional conversations he had with death row inmates in the weeks before their executions.
“They’re men, just like me, with emotions,” Farewell said. “Suddenly, I had this overwhelming urge to forgive."
Farewell was the only family member in court Monday, according to news outlets.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, whose agency investigated the South Carolina killings, said Allen deserved the death penalty because of the terror he unleashed in the community.
“He's going to kill again. He likes it," Lott outside the courtroom. “He's a lucky man because the system wore the victim down.”
Prosecutor Byron Gipson agreed Allen deserved to die but said he couldn't let his feelings outweigh the wishes of the victims' families.
Before he was resentenced, Allen read a statement apologizing for his crimes. He said he had sought help for his serious mental problems but never found the right resources.
“After years of reflection, I have come to understand how my background and upbringing did not prepare me to navigate conflicts or handle stressful situations,” he said.
Allen's attorneys had asked the judge who sentenced him to death to spare his life, citing reports from psychologists and others that a litany of abuse during his childhood led to severe mental illness.
According to the reports, Allen either was sent or volunteered to go to a psychiatric hospital seven times in five years leading up to the killings, which took place when he was 22. They cited a time when Allen threated to kill himself by jumping off a roof. Police called his mother who arrived hours later, laughed and walked away.
Allen’s mother also started kicking him out of the house when he was in fourth grade and Allen remembered sleeping in bushes, a friend’s treehouse, or on the McDonald’s playground, according to the reports. Judge G. Thomas Cooper said he didn’t believe the reports and sentenced Allen to die.
