COLUMBIA, SC — A man who spent nearly two decades on South Carolina’s death row for killing two people has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, two years after a federal court overturned his original sentence, news sources report.
A Lexington County judge has approved the deal for Quincy Allen on Monday.
In 2002, Allen murdered four people: a woman he picked up on the street in Columbia; a man who was in the restaurant where Allen worked; and two men in a convenience store in Surry County, North Carolina. He was sentenced to death for the murders in South Carolina. He pleaded guilty to the murders in North Carolina and was sentenced to life in prison.
A federal court of appeals his death sentence overturned in 2022, saying the judge who ordered his execution ignored psychiatric problems stemming from a mother who began kicking him out of the house when he was in fourth grade and a stepfather who pointed an unloaded gun at his head and pulled the trigger.
Instead of seeking the death penalty again, prosecutors agreed to a life sentence and Allen, 44, vowed never to appeal, the news reports said.
Allen’s life sentence leaves 32 inmates on death row in South Carolina, down from early 2011, when the state last carried out an execution.
The prisoners either died of natural causes or, like Allen, were given new prison sentences after successfully appealing their death sentences.
The death penalty in South Carolina has been up in the air for 13 years, ever since the state’s supply of lethal injection drugs expired. The pharmacy that was dispensing the drugs refused to continue unless it could do so anonymously.
The state passed a shield law, changed the lethal injection method to one drug and obtained the necessary medicine. Lawmakers also passed a law that would allow executions by firing squad, as well as the centuries-old electric chair. But the legality of the shield law and whether death by bullet to the heart or electric shock constitutes cruel and unusual punishment be assessed by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
In Allen’s case, prosecutors said that after his death sentence was overturned in 2022, the families of his victims in Columbia decided they were done with the legal battle and wanted to sentence him to life in prison.
Allen killed Scott Farewell’s brother, Jedediah Harr, when 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 described the candid, heartfelt, emotional conversations he had with death row inmates in the weeks leading up to their executions.
“They’re men, just like me, with emotions,” Farewell said. “Suddenly I felt an overwhelming urge to forgive.”
According to news sources, Farewell was the only family member present in court on Monday.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, whose agency investigated the South Carolina killings, said Allen deserved the death penalty for the terror he unleashed on the community.
“He’s going to kill again. He likes it,” Lott told WIS-TV outside the courtroom. “He’s a lucky guy because the system has exhausted the victim.”
District Attorney Byron Gipson agreed that Allen deserved to die, but said he could not let his feelings outweigh the wishes of the victims’ families.
Before he was resentenced, Allen read a statement apologizing for his crimes, saying he had sought help for his severe mental health issues but never found the right resources.
“After years of reflection, I have come to realize that my background and upbringing did not prepare me to deal with conflict or stressful situations,” he said.
Allen’s lawyers had asked the judge who sentenced him to death to spare his life, citing reports from psychologists and others that a series of abuses in his youth had led to serious mental illness.
According to the reports, Allen was sent to or volunteered to go to a psychiatric hospital seven times in the five years leading up to the murders, which occurred when he was 22. They cited one instance when Allen threatened to commit suicide by jumping off a roof. Police called his mother, who arrived hours later, laughed and walked away.
Allen’s mother also began kicking him out of the house when he was in fourth grade, and Allen recalled sleeping in bushes, in a friend’s tree house or on the McDonald’s playground, according to the reports. Judge G. Thomas Cooper said he did not believe the reports and sentenced Allen to death.
