Family relieved after USC student’s killer loses appeal
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - The family of a University of South Carolina student who was brutally murdered after getting into a car she mistakenly thought was her Uber home is expressing relief now that the man convicted in her killing will remain behind bars.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals upheld the guilty verdicts for Nathaniel Rowland in the high-profile kidnapping and murder of Samantha Josephson in March 2019.
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She was last seen getting into a Black Chevy in the Five Points area of Columbia. Hours later, her body was discovered by turkey hunters in Clarendon County.
Judge Clifton Newman sentenced Rowland to life in prison after a week-long trial Richland County trial in June of 2021. Jurors deliberated for only about an hour.
Seymour Josephson, Samantha’s father, said his family was surprised when the decision came down last week, but he fully anticipates that Rowland will be filing further appeals.
He is taking solace in the fact, though, that the Court of Appeals’ decision, which was unanimous, left little room for ambiguity.
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“We were relieved that it happened this week, and relieved that there’s really no chance for him to be out or to have a new trial,” Seymour Josephson said in a Friday interview.
The last five and a half years for the Josephson family have been heart-wrenching, but they have turned their pain into purpose.
“What we’re trying to do is not to have this happen again with our foundation because it is such a dramatic and drastic pain that we have gone through and continue to go through on a daily basis,” Seymour Josephson said.
Seymour Josephson argues that Rowland will try to get his convictions overturned by any means necessary, but he believes this was his best chance on appeal arguing that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated. Rowland has maintained his innocence.
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His defense team challenged the verdicts on several grounds, including arguing that law enforcement did not have probable cause to search his car.
“He’s just reaching for everything and anything,” Seymour Josephson said. “The reason of having a BOLO out is to be on the lookout for an automobile of a certain type.”
Having already received the initial BOLO regarding Josephson’s disappearance, and a subsequent alert about a Black Chevy, Jeffrey Kraft with the Columbia Police Department “was acting diligently in the course of a missing person investigation and he had reasonable suspicion for the stop,” the court ruled.
Rowland also argued that the trial judge should have excluded testimony from a handwriting expert that tied the defendant to an envelope found in the car, and also excluded testimony from a DNA expert that linked him to the murder weapon.
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“There was just an overwhelming amount of evidence that you could throw out something and still be convicted, right?” Seymour Josephson said.
The state’s second-highest court shut down each of these arguments, and suggested that the jury got it right.
Even if a portion a portion of the DNA expert’s testimony were erroneously itted, the Court of Appeals stated that “any such error would be harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt the State presented at trial.”
“When you have so much evidence against somebody that is a monster like him, there’s not much of a defense that somebody can put up,” Seymour Josephson said. “There’s not an attorney out there that can do anything when there’s so much evidence against somebody.”
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Josephson and his family are working to ensure that this does not happen to anyone else through work on their What’s My Name Foundation and trying to strengthen federal laws around rideshare safety.
Fifth Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson said in a statement:
“The Nathaniel Rowland case was one of the most horrific trials I have experienced in my tenure as the Fifth Circuit Solicitor.
I am pleased that the South Carolina Court of Appeals upheld the verdict handed down by a Richland County jury in July 2021. Although the Court’s decision cannot bring Samantha back to us, I hope that, in time, it will bring peace and closure to the Josephson family.”
Rowland’s attorney did not return a request for comment.
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