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.
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