State News

Court upholds death sentence

By Paul Garber | Journal Reporter

Published: November 19, 2009

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The S.C. Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Quincy Jovan Allen on Monday, who admitted to killing four people in a crime spree across the Carolinas, including a clerk and a customer at a convenience store in Surry County, N.C., in 2002.

He pleaded guilty at the start of his South Carolina trial in 2005. He was already serving a life sentence in North Carolina for the murders of Richard Hawks of Lowgap and Robert Shane Roush of Lancaster, Ohio, on Aug. 12, 2002, at a Citgo just off I-77 near Dobson.

Allen's attorney had appealed based, in part, on the sentencing judge saying in his decision to issue the death sentence that he hoped it would act as a deterrent to abusive parents -- something his attorney called an arbitrary factor beyond Allen's control.

The state's highest court ruled that issue was only a small part of the sentencing decision from Judge Thomas Cooper and that his primary reasoning was that "the murders were deliberate, premeditated and cruel."

Allen is on death row at a maximum-security prison in Ridgeville.